Steve Sarkisian passionately denies any NFL interest, reaffirms he will be Texas coach in 2026

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian went on a nearly three-minute rant on the SEC teleconference call on Wednesday afternoon after getting fed up with online rumors. The coach has been battling them for weeks, he explained.

Reports first surfaced in late October that Sarkisian could be interested in an NFL opening. He has since refuted those reports.

Despite that, Steve Sarkisian still felt the need to stamp things out more authoritatively on Wednesday. He began:

“I’d like to comment on something before I get into our team, something that has been bothering me now over the past few weeks,” Sarkisian said. “And this people reporting that, or insinuating that, there’s a possibility I could leave the University of Texas. And that is absolutely false and untrue.

“I’m not going anywhere. Never do I do this because I never want to be a distraction, so I never address these things. But at this point now I feel like it is important that I do do this, because it’s important for our team, it’s important for our university.”

The good news for Texas is that Steve Sarkisian isn’t hearing these rumors because he’s on the hot seat. Quite the opposite, he’s been highly successful with the Longhorns.

Which is part of why he wanted to make it abundantly clear he’s not going anywhere. He needs to continue to project program stability in recruiting.

“I’ve had no discussions, not with my agent, not with the university, not with any other school, not with any NFL team about ever going anywhere else,” Sarkisian said. “I came here to win championships. I’ve got two kids enrolled at the University of Texas, one in law school, one on our team. I’ve got a third that hopefully decides to enroll at the University of Texas next fall. And my wife and I just had our son here in Austin. This is our home.”

Sarkisian would circle back around to his accomplishments at Texas so far, which have included making the College Football Playoff semifinals in back-to-back years. That’s no joke.

Still, Steve Sarkisian wants to finish things off. He wants that title.

“We came here to win championships,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve built a damned good football program over the five years that we’ve been here. We’ve been to two College Football Playoffs, we’ve won a Big 12 championship, we went to the SEC Championship Game in Year 1. We’ve had 23 players drafted the last two years, which is more than any other school in the country. And our team GPA is at an all-time high. So can we please stop putting things out there that you have absolutely zero evidence on? And then can we please stop retweeting, putting it back out there as if is true, as if it’s the gospel? It is not true.”

Got some intel on Steve Sarkisian? A question about where he might be headed? The good news is Sarkisian is offering a direct line on any and all info about those topics.

“If you have a question about my future, call me or call Chris Del Conte, our athletic director, and we can set the record straight for you,” Sarkisian said. “Does everybody understand? So moving forward, when some Joe Blow decides to put something on social media out there we all don’t run with it like it’s the gospel? Can we all agree on that on this call?

“And if you have a question about my future with the University of Texas, ask me on one of these calls. Ask Chris Del Conte, he’ll be more than happy to take your call so that we can set the record straight, so that we can focus on our football team, which is really what we should be doing. Everybody good with that?”