Sean Miller explains what made Texas an attractive job opening

Veteran head coach Sean Miller, who had spent the previous three seasons at Xavier (second stint), was hired as the new head coach at Texas following the firing of Rodney Terry on March 23, 2025.

Miller made his first appearance at the SEC Spring Meetings on Tuesday, where he detailed just what was attractive to him about the University of Texas and the Southeastern Conference.

“Well it’s two parts,” Miller responded when asked. “I mean there aren’t many places that combine the forces that we have on our side. The city of Austin. I think that it gets known around the country as like this really cool, great, college town. I had never heard a bad word. Great place to live. Great food scene, live music, great college town. You get to Austin and you’re like oh my goodness, this is one of the top-ten largest cities in our country. It’s way more than a college town, it’s a thriving city. It’s the fastest growing city in America. And then you look at our campus. Starting with the University itself, I think the statistic that is in play right now is 90,000 applicants a year. They accept less than 9,000. There aren’t many universities that can say that.”

The Ellwood City, PA native has coached in a plethora of conferences, including the Big Ten (assistant at Wisconsin), the MAC (assistant at Miami OH), the Big East (assistant at Pittsburgh and head coach at Xavier) and the Pac-12 (head coach at Arizona). He however has never coached in the SEC… until now.

“It Just Means More is a great slogan,” Miller said with a grin. “We’ve all seen it from the outside if you’re not apart of the SEC. But it does. You feel that when you turn the TV on, when you watch a college football/college basketball game, you sense that college sports is just incredibly important in this footprint.”

Miller continued to boast about Texas’ Moody Center, which was opened in 2022. The arena replaced the Frank Erwin Center as the home of Texas Basketball and cost $375 million.

“That and the other part of Texas is the Moody Center and our practice facility. It’s only two and a half or three years old. There are very few places that have that type of new facilitiy, and that’s a great combination that I just named there in a row. It’s a decision that although for me, Xavier, it’s not like I wanted to leave there. It’s a great place in its own right, its just if you really want to be the best or try to win at the highest level, I think the future of college sports is right here.”