Column: Why was Steve Sarkisian included in ESPN’s 2023 coaching hot seat and retirement watch?
Would you say Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is on the hot seat? Or that he might be retiring soon? I wouldn’t, and technically neither would ESPN.
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But ESPN senior writer Adam Rittenberg described Sarkisian as a coach to ‘keep an eye on’ when it comes to jobs with the potential to change due to firing or retirement during the 2023 season.
Only one Big 12 coach, West Virginia’s Neal Brown, was placed on the hot seat by the ESPN veteran. Brown was placed in a category occupied last year by Scott Frost, Bryan Harsin, Herm Edwards, and Geoff Collins. Every member of that group was let go during the course of the 2022 season.
Rittenberg placed Sarkisian, along with Houston’s Dana Holgorsen, in the category that falls just short of hot seat with the following explanation.
Sarkisian is 13-12 at Texas, continuing a head-coaching tenure — no 10-win seasons, only one nine-win season — that hasn’t come close to what he accomplished as a coordinator. He’s signed through 2026 and would be owed $12.6 million if fired this year, but Texas has the funds if the team backslides this fall. The arrival of decorated quarterback recruit Arch Manning helps Sarkisian’s chances of coaching in 2024. What could hurt him: two attractive replacement candidates within the state in Sonny Dykes, who just took TCU to the national title game, and UTSA’s Jeff Traylor.
-Adam Rittenberg
Let’s be clear, Sarkisian has given no indication he’s considering early retirement.
Plus, there’s no disputing much of what Rittenberg wrote. Sarkisian is 13-12. He hasn’t had a 10-win season in his time leading not just Texas, but also Washington and USC. Manning joined Quinn Ewers, Maalik Murphy, and Charles Wright in the quarterback room. Dykes and Traylor are well-known to the UT administration.
The definition of “backslide” is open to interpretation, especially after the three-win improvement seen in 2022. Is backslide 4-8 or 7-5? One of those unlikely scenarios is more plausible than the other, especially with the current collection of stars on campus. Texas has multiple top-five classes on the Forty Acres and burgeoning talent at key positions, most notably quarterback.
Details like that point toward a successful upcoming Longhorn football season, one marking the final go-round in the Big 12, that’ll remove Sarkisian from these types of articles in the coming years.
If it were to somehow go the opposite direction, where Texas is bowl eligible but achieves little else, then I still doubt Texas considers paying that $12.6 million to start things over…
Again.
For the fourth time in the span of a decade.
I don’t see Texas flirting with the idea of not making a bowl. Considering the conference landscape, the current state of the roster, and the overall sense of goodwill the program has created for itself, things are on an upward trajectory. Right now, I see the floor for this year’s team at seven wins, and a strong offseason could bump that number up.
Second, Texas has an administration that is strongly invested into Sarkisian’s success. They know that hiring a fifth head coach since the start of the 2013 season is not in the best interest of the football program or the university. They want to see Sarkisian succeed, and that applies in Texas’ current conference home and the one the Horns are moving to.
It may not ever be clear if Sarkisian was hired with the eventual move to the SEC in mind. The hiring took place in January 2021; the announcement of Texas and Oklahoma heading east didn’t leak until July of that same year.
But Sarkisian’s time under Nick Saban for two-plus years, whether as analyst or offensive coordinator (or interim head coach!), cultivated coaching traits the leadership trio of Kevin Eltife, Jay Hartzell, and Chris Del Conte deemed to be a significant positive for the Texas job regardless of conference affiliation. It led them to a branch of a coaching tree Texas once tried to uproot, and a tree that’s prevalent in the SEC.
The investment into Sarkisian’s success, whether through staff salaries, recruiting operations, portal efforts, facilities, NIL, or otherwise, makes it clear Texas doesn’t want to go through another reset. They want to win with Sarkisian.
And after all, first-years are filled with frustrating chapters for the most part. TCU is the exception, not the rule.
During the last three Year 1’s at Texas, the Longhorns were a combined 18-19. I’ve got a more recent example from the Big 12 proving that Year 1’s are rife with problems in Brent Venables’ 2022 Oklahoma.
As for an SEC example, look at how Florida fared in 2022 under first-year head coach Billy Napier. They went 6-7 as well. Have fun this year with that process in the SEC West, Hugh Freeze.
Is a Year 1 for a new head coach (because there are no proverbial Year 0’s at Texas) what UT wants from its debut season in the SEC? I’ll venture the answer is “not at all.”
Not only is Texas invested in Sarkisian’s success, Sarkisian himself has shown he wants to win and win big in Austin. His tenacious effort on the trail, even on the heels of a 5-7 season, helped the program land Manning over Alabama and Georgia. Sarkisian has utilized the portal to fill needs, not fill the roster, indicating his desire for the program to be a hub of development. One of the players he intends to develop indicates a fair amount, too, considering it’s his own son.
This isn’t any sort of call for a contract extension. Many of those at Texas in the past few years have been ill-timed, and one to Sarkisian, even during this offseason, would fit into that same category.
But the idea that he could find himself on the hot seat? Or that he’s even one to watch? That doesn’t mesh with the steps taken on the field in 2022 and off the field in 2023.
I’ll show some grace to the author when it comes to that area. In an article that covers candidates from every Power 5 conference and the Group of 5, I understand using the ‘I believe it when I see it’ rationale and the ‘same ol’ Texas’ line of thinking when it comes to a team that just went 8-4 in the regular season.
Close followers, though, have seen improvement in many program aspects in the most recent handful of months.
That leads me to believe Sarkisian won’t find himself in the 2024 edition of this article whenever Rittenberg writes it, and it’ll be because Sarkisian is leading Texas into its debut season in the SEC after a high-quality Big 12 swansong.
