What lies ahead for Steve Sarkisian and company with transfer portal, bowl, and recruiting season upcoming

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian mentioned at his weekly press conference on Monday he felt a little bit helpless while watching Kansas vs. Kansas State over the weekend. If the Jayhawks had won, Sarkisian’s Longhorns would have played in the Big 12 championship game. But since Texas lost contests to Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, and TCU, and also since K-State won the Sunflower Showdown, Texas’ 6-3 conference record ended up one game behind the second-place Wildcats’ 7-2 mark and Chris Klieman’s program earned the right to face TCU in Arlington this Saturday.

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Though there’s no conference title game ahead for UT, several extremely important portions of the college football calendar are on the doorstep for Sarkisian, his staff, and his program.

First come discussions with members of his own roster regarding whether they will seek opportunities to play professional football or return for another season. For others, the task will be determining if they will come back to the Forty Acres or if they’re better served finding another place to play via the transfer portal.

The NCAA transfer portal will open to non-graduate transfer student-athletes the day after the 2022 championship selection process. In FBS football, that day is December 5. Prior to next Monday, Sarkisian said he plans to meet with all of his players to determine which avenues would be the proper course of action for each individual.

“We try to help them make really rational decisions and not emotional ones,” Sarkisian said. “Where are they at in school? Have they graduated? Do they want to pursue a masters, and if they’ve already started a masters, where are they at? What does their future look like here? What does their future look like somewhere else?”

“Like I said, I meet with every player. I love that because it’s a chance to make that connection with a player over a four-year period of having these conversations. Hopefully, you build up enough equity and trust with them that they can take your word for that.”

That’s regarding players that could either stay at Texas or leave Austin for other programs. In the era of the transfer portal, who Texas brings in is just as important as who leaves Texas.

Has Sarkisian made any determinations as to where he might make additions? On Monday, he wouldn’t publicly say, qualifying that the aforementioned meetings would dictate the direction they may take in recruiting the transfer portal.

“With this day and age in the portal, you’ve kind of got to look at everything,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with our own team. I don’t know who’s going into the portal. You just kind of have to take it day by day quite frankly. I don’t think you can say ‘we need that.’”

That’s not to say Sarkisian is going to take the process slowly, but they’ll attempt to get the full picture of what his roster has and what the portal offers before diving head first into pursuit of portal players.

“What are the needs? What’s a specific need and what’s a luxury?” Sarkisian said. “There’s a different between a want and a need. I think we have to acknowledge that on our roster. We’ve also got a lot of good, young players on our roster that maybe weren’t frontline players this year, but with another extra bowl practice time, another offseason conditioning program, another spring practice, another summer workout schedule, what can they be? And will they be better than what maybe somebody else has?”

While that’s ongoing, Sarkisian will not only continue to recruit high school prospects, but also prepare members of his current roster who plan to participate in the bowl game. When asked on Monday, what the schedule will look like for Texas’ bowl prep, he offered the following as far as the process.

“Our first five or so practices for bowl prep will be really dedicated back to a spring ball mentality or a training camp mentality,” Sarkisian said. “We’re going to get back to the basics on a lot of things. We’re going to re-teach some fundamentals, some techniques, some general schemes to make sure everybody’s got a firm understanding and we can work with those players to do that. The second half of the practices for the bowl game will be dedicated to the actual game-planning.”

That’s a busy to-do list for a head coach. Not only does he have to focus on roster building, but also roster retention and roster preparation for an upcoming bowl game.

“It’s a new era of college football,” Sarkisian said. “The transfer portal, NIL, things of that nature, are all areas that we have to adapt to. I think that we’ve got a creative group of people that we work with.”

Despite those varying responsibilities, Sarkisian looks forward to every day he gets to walk into the office.

“I eat this up,” Sarkisian said. “I say this all the time: I get to do what I love, I love what I do, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.”