Steve Sarkisian discusses his coaching upbringing and major influences, plus his aversion to the Air Raid
Would Steve Sarkisian ever run the Air Raid? How did he even get into coaching? Who are his main influences outside of Pete Carroll and Nick Saban?
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Sarkisian answered these and other major questions on the first episode of the second season of Lawyers and Longhorns, a YouTube series hosted by Arnold & Itkin LLP.
Kurt Arnold and Jason Itkin have been front and center in their support of Texas Longhorns football. Gate 8 at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is named in their honor. And in a more recent development, the Longhorns’ new South End Zone video board will bear their names.
The firm’s YouTube channel has also featured current and former Longhorns like Johntay Cook, Ja’Tavian Sanders, Jaylan Ford, DeAndre Moore, AD Mitchell, Kelvin Banks, Cedric Baxter, Quinn Ewers, and Jordan Whittington.
Arnold and Itkin got the head coach of the Longhorns talking about a wide variety of topics.
Sark starts off by talking about his upbringing, mentioning he’s the youngest of seven siblings. He goes into his personal background, mentioning his Armenian dad moved from Tehran, Iran to Boston, Mass. at the age of 18. In Boston, Sarkisian’s father met his Irish mother, and as far as sports go that led him to an interest in soccer from a young age.
However, Sarkisian started his career in sports as a baseball player. He mentions he thought he’d be a shortstop coming out of high school, and even played at USC for a time, but life took him a different direction. He eventually went the junior college route before his standout career at BYU.
“I used to tell myself I know I’m not as physically gifted as everybody else, but I’m going to be the fastest mental player on every snap,” Sarkisian said. “I think that’s how I gravitated to the coaching world. I wanted to really learn the game. I didn’t just want to know the plays to run, but why they work predicated on the defense they were playing and vice versa.”
As a quarterback, Sarkisian prided himself on throwing a “catchable ball.” That fed into his current philosophy with passers. Completing the pass is the most important part of passing offense and nothing can happen unless that is accomplished, and he let that influence how he played the game.
Sarkisian played for LaVell Edwards and offensive coordinator Norm Chow. He mentions that Chow’s offense at BYU was a version of the Air Raid, but it included tight ends and backs. On that staff at BYU? Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, who both took the system to another level.
“I had a great relationship with Coach Leach,” Sarkisian said. “When I was at the University of Washington, he was at Washington State. We would talk about that offense because he was still running it and that’s what I played in in college.”
Would Sark run the Air Raid?
“The Air Raid has never won a championship, and I think there’s some reasons and layers to that,” Sarkisian said. “There’s certain ways you have to practice. There’s certain schemes that I think your defense needs to see if you’re going to show them to your defense. I try to lean into, what are the things that are proven, that have withstood the test of time? There’s definitely a pro style of offense that has proven to be successful.”
He dives further into his offensive philosophy and how adaptable he tries to be with things like tempo, personnel, and scheme.
“Fast is great when you score,” Sarkisian said. “Fast is not any good when it’s three plays and you’ve got to punt it right back to them, and your defense is sitting over there on the sideline like ‘we just sat here for 38 seconds.'”
Sarkisian talks about how he got into coaching, starting with his brief foray into dot-com businesses before he found work with his former junior college. He then got bold and visited Carroll to try and get a job with the Trojans, and works with Carroll as a grad assistant.
The differences between Carroll and Saban, two entirely different coaches, is the next topic. That said, Sark mentions both are probably more similar than most would like to admit. He goes into how he was influenced by both at critical junctures of his career.
Sark’s philosophy on culture involves a lot of personal connection that fosters “want-to” instead of “have-to.” He mentions culture and the importance of it in building a football program, especially with involving love into his culture.
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The remainder of the video goes over Sarkisian’s relationships with Lane Kiffin, Raheem Morris, Dan Quinn, Kyle Shanahan, Sean McVay, and Mike McDaniel and their influences on his style, his philosophy in recruiting (“Our goal is to combine talented, high-character people to make up our culture. That’s when we’re really dangerous.”), Top Golf, and much more. Part II will arrive on September 5.
