What Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said about season-opening game at Ohio State

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian met with the media for his weekly press conference ahead of the season-opening top-three matchup between Ohio State and Texas in the Horseshoe on Saturday.

Sarkisian opened his press conference with an opening statement before taking questions from local reporters in Austin.

“Pretty epic matchup when you think about 1 vs. 2 in at least one of the two major polls for the first game of the season is great for college football, in my opinion,” Sarkisian said. “As much as I’m going to talk about the rankings don’t matter, which I believe that, but I do think for college football, the fanfare and the excitement around this game, I think is great for our sport. And the fact that we have three top-10 matchups this weekend is great for college football in general.”

Here’s everything else Sark said Monday:

On the season-opening matchup…

“These are two really good teams. Ton of respect for Ohio State and ton of respect for Ryan Day and the job he’s done. Obviously, they’re the defending national champs. I think Coach Day is like 70-10 since he’s taken over at Ohio State. You think about the quality of players in this game, you know, and if you look at last year’s game, 26 players got drafted off of the two teams in the NFL. You include free agents, 32 players that were playing in that game a year ago are now in the NFL. And the fact that both teams are coming back is one and two in the country, I think speaks volumes to the quality of programs that both of us have, quite frankly. And so we’ve got nine guys that started in that game a year ago. We had 30 players back that played in that game a year ago, so we do have some experience from that environment. But it should be a heck of a day.”

On the challenge of playing at Ohio State…

“Naturally, this is a tall task. We talked about this at length before the season, but we’ve got a tough road slate this year. This is the first of a few to come. It serves us good to have to go on the road early, find out about ourselves, find out where we’re at as a program, where we can improve, and where we can continue to get better because we’re going to travel more than any other SEC team this year in our conference.”

On this game coming first for both teams…

I think we would always, I guess, want it to be, you know, you’d like to get something, you know, some footing underneath you with some new players, some guys that maybe haven’t played with you, even if they’re transfers. But I think at the end of the day, it’s like if it’s both of ours first game, you feel okay. Where I’d be really uncomfortable if this was our first game and they had already gotten a game under their belt. So it just is what it is. You try to prepare your team as best you can. You try to minimize the self-inflicted wounds and so you can play as clean of football as possible come Saturday at noon.”

On whether Texas is using Cotton Bowl loss to Buckeyes as motivation…

“That was last year’s team, different team, different people, different personnel. You know, you use it when you need it. I didn’t major in it, but I used it when I needed it. When I felt like, man, we’re getting a little complacent, training camps getting a little mundane. You kind of, I always had that in my back pocket, but it’s a different team, you know, different leaders. They’ve got a different team. Everybody’s, you know, it’s very different. You know, at the end of the day, that stone walking out of the cotton bowl, you know, last year. But at the end of the day, this is a new challenge, new journey, new mission that we’re on. And so that’s kind of been our focus.”

On Julian Sayin…

“Julian’s a really good player. He’s a natural passer. You know, he’s got a quick release. He’s a better athlete than you think he can run. So we definitely need to be alert to that and ready for that.”

On how his players will handle the crowd noise at Ohio State…

“They do well. You know, I think, I think one thing that crowd noise does is once you get over being overwhelmed by the noise, it forces the focus. It forces you to focus and inevitably the way we operate when you’re really focused, it better serves us. And so sometimes I’m wondering if we should be pumping crowd noise at home too. I feel like we have more penalties on, on pre-snap stuff at home than we do on the road. And so, but, but there’s a reason for that I think is we practice it and our guys feel comfortable with the crowd noise.”

On continuity at Ohio State…

“My humble opinion is they’re not going to change. Why would you change that? The number one defense in the conference, they had a great run in the playoffs. They had a really good offense last year. You know, Coach Day’s fingerprints are all over that. They kept the entire defensive staff outside of the defensive play caller. So, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, yeah, they’re going to evolve just like we evolve every year. But I think the premise of who they are in all three phases is going to remain really consistent.”