Steve Sarkisian shares how Texas cannot play against Oklahoma

Emotions are high in rivalry matchups. Particularly in the Red River Showdown, the annual battle between Texas and Oklahoma. While playing with a certain level of emotion is a good thing, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian warns that playing too emotional can a bad thing.

During his press conference ahead of the big rivalry game this weekend, Sarkisian was asked how to walk the line between amping his players up while keeping them locked in and focused on the task at hand. For Sarkisian, it’s a simple grammatical difference. Emotion vs. emotional. Playing with emotion vs. playing emotionally.

“I think there’s two things for us. One, we want to play with emotion. Football is a game of emotion. I think that, you know, teams need to play with emotion. We just don’t wanna play emotional,” he shared.

“That’s a fine line. Because when you get emotional, that’s when you are doing things out of character. You start getting post-whistle penalties. You start to have some clutter, instead of clarity, when you’re emotional. So we want to play with emotion. We just don’t want to be emotional.”

He then referenced the 2007 movie Shooter to illustrate his point. A movie starring Mark Wahlberg whose character has his country turn on him and must take down some of the top United States officials without being caught. Here was the analogy:

“I’m a big movie buff, and I think about the movie Shooter. Clearly, that guy had to have some emotion and he had some things involved with him that were pushing him to do what he needed to do. But it took so much precision to make those shots, and there had to be clarity, there had to be focus, had to be mental intensity. If he was emotional, he would’ve been erratic. So our goal is to kind of take on more of a sniper mentality. Have emotion, just not get emotional.”

You heard the man. Steve Sarkisian wants his players adopting the mindset of a military marine turned rogue assassin. Just don’t get too emotional, though. Sooners vs. Longhorns kicks off in Norman at noon E.T. and 11 a.m. local time. Get those emotions running high nice and early.