'Borderline obsessed' with championships, Steve Sarkisian wants his program to become the same
Two of Steve Sarkisian‘s favorite sayings are that coaches get what they emphasize and teams take on the personality of their head coach. While much about the character, shape, and strengths of the 2024 Texas Longhorns is still being determined, there’s an aspect Sarkisian wants his program to pursue as fanatically as he does in the current stage of the offseason.
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“I came here to win a championship,” Sarkisian said Wednesday. “If I can get one, then I want to get two. I’m borderline obsessed with it at this point. I know what it tasted like last year. I know how close we were, and I couldn’t wait to get back. Hopefully, that’s what our team starts to exude, this obsession with being the best because we have a locker room full of young men that are driven, that are focused, that want to be the best.
“They want to be the best students that Texas football has ever had. They want to be the best team. They’re totally going for it, but that’s the challenge day in and day out.”
The current challenge for the team is offseason workouts, something Sarkisian said started two weeks ago and requires players to be at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium lifting, running, and participating in competitive events before most UT students have even had a chance to press the snooze button on their alarms.
So far, that challenge has included assimilating over 30 new players from Texas’ sixth-ranked 2024 high school class and ninth-ranked portal group. It also includes figuring out who will take over some of the leadership positions (Sarkisian predicted 10-12 Longhorns would be selected in the 2024 draft, the main cause of that small leadership void).
For Sarkisian, the offseason is a time of introspection. It’s a time where begins to determine what the right personnel packages, plays, and players to execute them are. That’ll be something shaped by UT’s current conditioning sessions, upcoming spring practices, and summer workouts ahead of the program’s first season in the Southeastern Conference.
But though it’s on his to do list, he knows there’s time to get it all done.
“September’s going to come quick enough,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then to get ourselves in position to start that journey.”
The way Sarkisian knows his team can help satiate his obsession in the winter and early spring is to attack the offseason grind as fervently as possible. Sarkisian often mentions his admiration and respect for former Alabama head coach Nick Saban. One of the things that Saban constantly emphasized throughout his successful tenure with the Crimson Tide was an infatuation with the process of preparation. Too much focus on the end result would, in Saban’s mind, detract from the attention needed on doing the things necessary to reach the finish line.
Sarkisian has taken that message and packaged it for his program. It helped the Longhorns win the Big 12 and reach the College Football Playoff, where their season ended a throw away from playing for the National Championship.
That’s a fantastic year, Texas’ best in some time, but Sarkisian wants to one-up it in 2024 and is working to make sure his program does the same in order to satisfy his obsession. All the while, he’ll be figuring out the ways for it to happen.
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“But the process of getting ourselves to that point is going to be the most critical of it all,” Sarkisian said. “We need to recreate, but not only do we need to recreate, we need to do it better. The 2024 version of Texas Longhorns football is going to look a little different than the 2023 version. My job is to identify the strengths of this team and play to the strengths.”
