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On Texas Football: Recruiting under Steve Sarkisian, and is Chris Jackson a home run hire?

Steve Habelby: Steve Habel01/25/23stevehabel
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Steve Sarkisian and Chris Del Conte (Tim Warner/Getty Images)

On the latest episode of On Texas Football’s weekly State of the Program YouTube Video, Bobby Burton of and Eric Nahlin take a look at the hiring of Chris Jackson, the style of recruiting by the Texas staff and plenty of other items regarding Steve Sarkisian’s management of the program.

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Nahlin said he had to familiarize himself with Jackson, the former wide receivers’ coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Jackson will assume that role on the Texas staff.

“I had some questions, like ‘can you recruit?’ because Jackson hasn’t done it,” Nahlin said. “You know just because you haven’t demonstrated the ability to recruit doesn’t mean that you can’t. And so I had to learn whether or not he’s got the tricks for that.

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“I came back feeling pretty confident about his ability overall to relate to players. That’s first of all, you know, recruiting is effort and relatability. That’s really what it boils down to. Do you want to recruit?”

Nahlin said Jackson’s resume shows he’s done a little bit of everything.

“He’s got a story, a path that he’s got experience from,” Nahlin explained. “From being a player, but also experience from his path. He’s seen the highs, he’s seen the lows of the sport. He’s coached the pros at high level. He’s actually trained them to get them ready for the combine. So there’s just so many different things that he has that are going to appeal to recruits.”

Burton talked about how Texas and Steve Sarkisian have been “recruiting through the whistle.”

“It’s a term Gerry Hamilton of Inside Texas likes to use all the time and I think we’ve adopted it,” Burton said. “Texas has offered players at the last possible minute.”

Nahlin concurred, saying: “Look, there’s always needs in a program to be filled. And there’s myriad ways to fill those needs than there ever was before, Bobby. You know when you’re doing this 20 years ago, if you got a transfer, man, it was a big deal. Holy crap! Or a JUCO guy? Now that was crazy. Now there’s just so many different ways to fill needs.”

Burton also discussed the way that guys are ending up in Texas.

“Looking at the 2023 class that Texas just signed and comparing it to the ‘22 class one of the things that I find encouraging about the trajectory of Sark and his, to use the term, program building is that a year ago, they ended up with a top five class in part because of the coaching carousel,” Burton opined. “Whether it was Lincoln Riley leaving Oklahoma, or whether it was Oregon and Mario Cristobal going and leaving two offensive line recruits more open than they were before he headed to Miami.

“This year there wasn’t that turmoil around them. Does it mean that Sarkisian is more built for long-term success?”

Find out the answer to that question and plenty more in the rest of the video.

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