IT Today: Steve Sarkisian's recent comments to ESPN
Welcome to Inside Texas Today! Every weekday, Inside Texas Today will provide the latest on Texas Longhorns sports from around the Forty Acres. This morning, looking at Steve Sarkisian’s recent comments about the SEC, Alabama, and Xavier Worthy to ESPN.
Here’s the Friday, May 6, 2022 edition.
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“I’m not naïve to that”
ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg caught up with Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the Big 12’s annual spring meetings. He spoke about Xavier Worthy, the SEC, and more. Let’s unpack.
“For us, at the end of the day, we’re in the Big 12,” Sarkisian said. “It’s important to know the direction of the conference and direction of college football and where we are going on a lot of these topics. … We’re in the Big 12, so we need to know the direction of where the conference is going right now.”
My take: Nothing groundbreaking here. Sarkisian has to coach for the conference his team is in. It’s a challenging position to be in, though, considering he also has to recruit at a high level to prepare for the SEC. However, recruiting at a high level should be the emphasis of any coach, including Texas’, regardless of affiliation.
“There’s a lot of great aspects of [Alabama] that I think we can take with us, but naturally, we have to do the things I’m comfortable doing and doing it the way that best suits us,” Sarkisian said. “There’s great coaches in the SEC, there’s really good players, there’s big people, there’s fast people. We’ve got to assemble a really good staff, which I think we’ve done. We’ve got to recruit on a really high level, which I think that we’ve shown that we can do. And then ultimately get those players big enough, faster and stronger.”
My take: I’ve covered Sarkisian for about a year, and when Rittenberg wrote [Alabama] I am pretty confident Sarkisian said “the other place” or “my old place” or something like that. He is very, very careful to never really mention the word “Alabama,” because he likely doesn’t want to have his name simply associated with being Alabama’s offensive coordinator.
“I understand it, I get it, Xavier Worthy was a heck of a player, a freshman All-American, broke a lot of records,” Sarkisian said. “Of course, people were going to try and use NIL to entice him to go to their school, so you’ve got to proactive when it comes to those things.”
My take: It’s actually interesting he is this forthright about the topic of Xavier Worthy. Sarkisian doesn’t tend to shy away from questions as long as they are presented fairly. The topic of his best receiver, who is coming off a great year, is of course a fair one. Saying “I get it” means, to me, he understood this was a potential outcome with the advent of NIL and the one-time transfer deadline. He knows it’ll be something he may have to deal with throughout his tenure as a college head coach. Of course, I wonder how forthright he’d be if Worthy had decided to enter the portal, but luckily it’s not something we have dive into.
Top 10
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Heisman Trophy
Top 10 rankings to win Heisman
- 2
Kentucky QB change
Stoops names Cutter Boley starter
- 3Hot
Paul Finebaum
What's next for Lane Kiffin
- 4
3-loss SEC teams or Penn State?
Debating College Football Playoff selections
- 5
Danny Stutsman Jersey Theft
OU star's Senior Day jersey stolen
Ultimately, we got to start winning some more games, I’m not naïve to that.”
My take: Yeah.
Texas viewing for 5/6
No. 12 men’s tennis – NCAA Tournament – Idaho – Austin, Texas – Texas Tennis Center – 10 a.m. – Live Video
No. 3 men’s tennis – NCAA Tournament – Ball State – Austin, Texas – Texas Tennis Center – Live Video
Baseball – at West Virginia – Morgantown, W.V. – Monongalia County Ballpark – 5:30 p.m. – ESPN+
No. 17 softball – at Baylor – Waco, Texas – Getterman Stadium – 6:30 p.m. – ESPN+
