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Steve Sarkisian has been the head coach of the Texas football team for four seasons now, and he is about to enter his fifth year. This isn't Sarkisian's first head coaching job, as he led Washington and USC back in the day. Much of Sarkisian's career has been spent as an assistant, however, and he has had some good role models to look up to. The most notable are Nick Saban and Pete Carroll, as Sarkisian worked under them at Alabama and USC.
Before Steve Sarkisian took the Texas football job, he was working under Nick Saban at Alabama. Before he coached at Washington, he was on Pete Carroll's staff at USC. Those are some good mentors right there.
“One thing that I learned in that time, you knew exactly what you were going to get from Nick Saban,” Sarkisian said during an episode of The Stampede. “I mean, it was like every day. It was almost robotic, and the players knew what to expect. The existing assistant coaches knew what to expect, very high standard, very high expectations of what was expected of you. The approach that he had every single day, and it got me thinking like, ‘Okay, let me think back to Pete Carroll.' Well, Pete Carroll is very different than Nick Saban, but very consistent in who he was.”
One thing that Sarkisian had some trouble with during the early parts of his career was finding out who he was as a coach. He spent so much time trying to be someone else, but he didn't focus on what he wanted to be.
“I thought back to myself as a young head coach, right when I was 33-34 years old, the University of Washington,” Sarkisian continued. “Man, one day I was flying high. I was Pete Carroll at its max, the next day, man I was trying to be Don James, you know. And then the next day I was trying to be Pete Carroll, and the next day I was trying to be Jim Lambright. It was like I didn't even know who I was.”
Now, Sarkisian is at Texas, and he has figured out who he is. Nick Saban and Pete Carroll definitely shaped him into what he is today, but Sarkisian still has his own unique approach to the game.
“By the time I got this job, I think I had a lot better understanding of who I was, what was important to me, what did I want our team to embody in our style of play, in our approach, in the way our staff talks to our players,” he said. “I've just tried to remain really consistent in that messaging, so that there aren't mixed messages, and so that when I do hear players do interviews, I almost can hear me talking, right?”
Steve Sarkisian figured out what type of coach he wants to be, and now he is one of the best head coaches in college football. He has taken the Texas football team to the College Football Playoff semifinals two years in a row, and the Longhorns are ranked No. 1 in the country to start the season. It's safe to say that Sarkisian is doing a pretty good job.
