Scottie Hazelton expected to join Texas defensive staff

The Texas Longhorns and head coach Steve Sarkisian have just made a huge coaching hire. According to On3’s Longhorns fan site, Inside Texas, the Longhorns are expected to bring aboard former Michigan State defensive coordinator Scottie Hazelton.

College football expert Bruce Feldman initially broke the news with this tweet.

“SOURCES: Texas is hiring Scottie Hazelton as a special assistant. Hazelton joins the Longhorns after recently serving as Michigan State’s DC along with previous DC stops at K-State, Wyoming, and NDSU where they won the 2011 FCS national title,” wrote Feldman via X.

The capacity in which Hazelton will help the program remains unknown at this time. However, Inside Texas’ Eric Nahlin believes the former Spartans defensive coordinator will hold a role similar to that of former TCU head coach Gary Patterson when he was a part of the program.

Hazelton is a well-respected defensive mind at the collegiate level. In his 28-year coaching career, he has had coaching stops throughout the college football landscape and one brief stint in the pros with the Jacksonville Jaguars as an assistant linebacker coach from 2014 – 16. Hazleton has held defensive coordinator positions at Kansas State, Michigan State, Missouri Southern State, Nevada, North Dakota State, Wyoming, and his alma mater, Fort Lewis.

As a defensive coordinator for the North Dakota State Bison, he helped the program capture its first FCS national championship, which opened up the gateway to their gymnastic-like run over the following decade, which included eight more titles for the program.

Sarkisian assesses how sustainable it is to be head coach and playcaller

Sarkisian is one of the few head coaches in major college football today who calls plays for his team, and Texas has enjoyed recent success under his unique role.

Since joining the coaching industry over two decades ago, the Longhorns head coach’s history as a quarterback coach and offensive coordinator has seen him call plays almost wherever he’s gone. He did so as headman at USC a decade ago and after spending time as an offensive coordinator in the NFL and at Alabama, Sarkisian didn’t give up play-calling duties after taking the job at Texas in 2021.

Heading into a brand new conference coming off a run to the College Football Playoffs, Sarkisian explained how he believes he can continue to endure the duties of both a head coach and of a de facto offensive coordinator at the same time.

“I think it’s sustainable,” Sarkisian told college football analyst and commentator Joel Klatt of his current role. “I think the thing for me, and I can’t speak for everybody else, is you try to hire really good people as best you can and people who are really competent and excel at what they do. And then you try to get them to understand the way we think, the way I think is the head coach, so that they can make some of the day-to-day operational decisions on different things. We can have a meeting, I can talk on these four or five things and then they can go handle those things.”