Steve Sarkisian reflects on slow start during Texas tenure: '5-7 in Austin, Texas, sucks'

The 2023 season was a banner year for Texas, perhaps the first time in more than a decade one could feel confident the Longhorns were sustainable contenders on the national stage. But it wasn’t always that way for head coach Steve Sarkisian during his tenure in Austin.

A playoff berth and Big 12 championship came for the Longhorns in 2023, Year 3 for Sarkisian at the helm. But that didn’t come after a few years of results that didn’t get the job done on the 40 Acres: 5-7, then 8-5.

“I’ll tell you this much: 5-7 in Austin, Texas, sucks,” Sarkisian said at SEC Media Days from the podium. “That was hard. That was hard on me, that was hard on players, that was hard on a lot of people. 8-5 was a little more palatable for people. But as you continue to stay committed to who you are and you stay committed to your course of action, you stay committed to what you believe in, over time you start to reap the benefits of that.”

Sarkisian also explained that piloting a program from the middle of the pack to near the top of the mountain has plenty of obstacles and potential false steps along the way.

“It takes time to learn the schemes, you bring in coaches and you have an idea of what you want to run and that’s nothing against a previous staff, but maybe they didn’t recruit the types of players that fit what we wanted to be and how we wanted to play,” Sarkisian said. “That takes time, too. There’s development of players in your program.”

And as the roster changes and development for players proceeds at different rates, Sarkisian has been met with plenty of hard roster choices.

“With that comes, sometimes, you have to — people that were supposed to be good players when you arrived maybe aren’t playing as much and maybe the guy that fit you a little bit better, you have to recognize and you have to play him a little bit more,” Sarkisian said. “But everybody earned their opportunity in our program over the past three years and the beauty of it has been, our players recognize that and then now they know the process to go make it work.” 

Despite the path not being an easy one, necessarily, Sarkisian has seemingly made the right calls and put the right plan in place to get Texas into the College Football Playoff conversation on a regular basis.