'Texas is back' thanks to Steve Sarkisian, and the Longhorns rewarded their head coach with massive raise
Steve Sarkisian won double-digit games for the first time in his career in 2023, and the Texas head coach was rewarded with a raise and extension that nearly doubled his annual salary.
After leading the Longhorns to the Big 12 Championship and their first College Football Playoff berth, Sarkisian was destined for an extension. And then Nick Saban abruptly retired, spurring Texas to pony up and lock down its head coach.
Last month, the school quickly announced that Sarkisian — who was paid less than Minnesota head coach PJ Fleck and Kansas’ Lance Leipold last year — would receive a big raise, and boy was it, we learned Saturday.
Sarkisian, who was paid a base salary of $5.6 million in 2023, will make $10.3 million in 2024, becoming the third-highest-paid coach in college football. The Longhorns added four years on his contract that now runs through 20230, guaranteeing Sarkisian $74.2 million.
There are loads of performance bonuses in the new deal, too, including $1.25 million for winning the national title.
And that’s what this deal is really all about — Texas believes it finally has a championship head coach again.
The only two coaches who will make more than Sarkisian in 2024 are Dabo Swinney ($10.8 million) and Kirby Smart ($10.7 million) — both of whom have a pair of national titles to their name. Sarkisian will be paid slightly more than Ryan Day, while also topping the likes of Brian Kelly, Mark Stoops and Lane Kiffin.
After a slow-build first two seasons (5-7, 8-5), the expectations for Sarkisian are clear — You’re our guy, now go bring the CFP trophy back to the Forty Acres.
“I said it when I came here three years ago, this is a dream job for me,” Sarkisian said last month when Texas announced the initial extension.
“It’s a destination job, and I’m fired up every day to be the head coach at The University of Texas. We’re thrilled with what we’ve been able to accomplish and proud of the culture we’ve built and the way our players have grown — on and off the field. But we’re just getting started. I’ve said it all along, we’ve been building this program for long-term success.”
It was less than a year ago that Sarkisian was ranked as a Tier 5 coach by one of the preeminent insiders of college football. He’d never won 10 games at USC, Washington or Texas. His teams had a propensity to cough up leads and play poor situational football late. He was an outstanding play-caller and offensive mastermind, but he hadn’t married those strengths with being a head coach.
Until he did last fall.
Sarkisian answered every question about his head coaching capabilities in 2023, assembling an elite staff, a championship roster with Top 5 recruiting classes and a well-oiled NIL operation that helped fill holes using the transfer portal. He took Texas into Alabama and won. The Longhorns won close games, and they didn’t let a letdown loss in Red River ruin the rest of their season.
By year’s end, Sarkisian had returned the Longhorns back to national prominence by winning the Big 12 and making the CFP.
His preseason comments about his team proved prophetic when he said, “It feels and looks like my team. The way the players talk. The way they act. The way they look. The way they move. How we practice. The speed. The tempo. All those things mean, ‘Ok, now we’re ready to go. This is what it’s supposed to look like.”
And he was right.
Even despite Quinn Ewers struggling to stay healthy again, Texas’ offense was awesome and the Longhorns’ defense was the best in the Big 12. After signing another Top 5 recruiting class and landing impact transfers like Isaiah Bond, Silas Bolden, Trey Moore and others, the program is set to enter Year 1 in the SEC ripe with momentum.
The Longhorns have the third-best national title odds in 2024, and a preseason win total (10.5) tied with Georgia for the highest in the country. With the foundation Sarkisian has established at Texas, coupled with the school’s infinite resources and investment, it seems like a matter of when, not if, the Longhorns will win a championship.
After the the way the Mack Brown tenure fizzled and the failings of Charlie Strong and Tom Herman, Texas finally has its guy. It took three seasons, but Steve Sarkisian buried the “Texas is BACK!” memes in 2023, and the Longhorns rewarded him handsomely for that.