Steve Sarkisian points out lack of success so far for 'high profile players' in college football

As Texas gets ready for a showdown with Florida in the Swamp, there’s a big question circling for Steve Sarkisian and the program. Is the team that showed up against Sam Houston going to show up again?

For most of the first three games of the season, the Longhorns played tight football. Everything seemed like a struggle. The Sam Houston game was a bloodletting of sorts, and the Texas stars, Arch Manning included, seemed to relish in the beating.

Sarkisian was asked about Manning, in particular, this week and went into a segue about other top players. He explained his thinking:

“Yeah, I mean I’m going to go on a little soapbox here then I’m going to get back to an answer,” he said. “I think one thing that came out of this weekend as well, and I’m looking around the country at the ‘high-profile players,’ I don’t know if any of them are living up to what everybody said they were supposed to be.

“But we’re in this era right now of everybody’s got a phone, so everybody’s got Twitter. There’s 9,000 podcasts going on. The coverage over college football is more and more intense than it’s ever been. And so players are getting put up on these pedestals really quickly in their careers.”

There have been some disastrous fall-outs. Arch Manning might not even have the worst crash out so far. Florida quarterback DJ Lagway, once a preseason Heisman Trophy favorite, threw five interceptions in a game against LSU.

Everyone seems to be pressing, and for Steve Sarkisian it’s one of the more relevant issues in college football right now. It is not limited to Texas.

“I felt like this weekend I could feel some guys pressing,” Sarkisian said. “Not so different, maybe, than Arch was pressing early on to where they feel like they have to live up to whether it’s whatever they’re allegedly making through NIL, or because this is what the media is saying I’m supposed to be or not being. College football players are getting critiqued and criticized more now than they ever have in the past, too, so this is a different era we’re in.”

That said, the Texas head coach knows it’s his job to provide solutions for guys like Manning. If Manning is pressing too much, it’s on Sarkisian to get him to loosen up.

“We have to do a great job as coaches of, I don’t want to say shelter, but we’ve got to protect our guys because they’re not pros yet,” Steve Sarkisian said. “The majority of them probably will be, of the guys that I’m talking about.

“But we’ve got to do a really good job of putting them in the right mental space to where they’re still enjoying playing the game of college football with their college football teammates. To me, that’s the point to these guys. I think that they’ve got to play for the love of the game, because they do love the game. They need to play football and not work football.”

Manning might be the poster boy for the issue at Texas. He’s the most visible guy by a mile, and everything he does is scrutinized.

But if he can solve it, he’s got the potential to be a force. So does Texas. Steve Sarkisian knows it.

“I think that that’s something we’ve been working on with Arch, and I’m sure there’s a lot of other coaches around the country that are going through similar things in that realm,” Sarkisian said. “You could talk Ryan Wingo, very similar. Our guys are finally starting to relax. It took four games in to relax and play a little bit. But I could feel guys press this weekend as well watching them play. I hope for them that they can get through it. Our game’s better when the good players are playing really good.”