Where Steve Sarkisian learned to teach his team to "play with emotion" and not emotional
Steve Sarkisian has long said that he wants his team to play with emotion.
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Football is a battle, after all. To operate without emotion in what’s nothing less than a fight is a disadvantage. The best teams operate with emotion. The best players operate with emotion.
But there’s a fine line for Sarkisian. He wants his teams to play with emotion, and that’s been evident in the various celebrations the Longhorns have been able to have throughout the course of a 5-0 start to the 2024 season.
However, he doesn’t want them to play emotional.
Sarkisian, as a second-team All-American and the Western Athletic Conference offensive player of the year in 1996, knows what it’s like to be in the midst of the battle. But was there a moment during his playing career whether at junior college, BYU, or in the CFL where that quality of playing in emotion though not emotional was proven essential?
No, as he explained on Wednesday. The idea comes from his time as a coach.
“That was something that, over time, I had a hard time putting into words,” Sarkisian said Wednesday on the SEC Coaches Teleconference. “(Nick) Saban more eloquently used this term that I’m referencing and that I took with me because it really resonated with me. I didn’t know how to say, but I knew what he was meaning. Once he said it the way that he said it, it resonated with me and I’ve carried it with me ever since.”
Striking the balance will be key for the Longhorns not just in the upcoming rivalry game with the Oklahoma Sooners, but also when the Georgia Bulldogs come to town the following week and in the ensuing SEC games Texas will participate in throughout the rest of the 2024 season.
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Similar applies for Sarkisian as a head coach and play-caller. Last Saturday following the Mississippi Game, Sarkisian joked that he cussed himself out for some ill-advised calls during the Longhorns’ 35-13 win.
That was yet another instance of Sarkisian dealing with emotion rather than dealing with being emotional.
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And as he revealed Wednesday, that was just another step in a process that started during his coaching career as opposed to when he was a star player.
