After Steve Sarkisian, once again, came up short in a big game situation against Georgia, no one is calling him “Big Game Sark” at all.
In fact, Sarkisian has proven to be a good coach for the Texas Longhorns. His redemption story in the world of college football is one that people who have struggled with alcoholism can look up to and appreciate.
As a recovering alcoholic myself, I am firmly in that camp.
But Sarkisian has not been able to win big games as the Longhorns’ head coach. Once again, on Saturday night between the hedges in Athens, Ga., Sarkisian and his Texas players were not able to get the job done.
It should be noted that then-No. 10 Texas (7-3, 4-2 SEC) only trailed then-No. 5 Georgia (9-1, 7-1 SEC) 14-10 at one point in the second half.
Despite some wide receivers having drops on solid passes (looking at you, Ryan Wingo) from Texas quarterback Arch Manning (and this loss isn’t pinned on him solely), the Longhorns were outplayed and outcoached in the fourth quarter.
Georgia head coach Kirby Smart showed Sarkisian how a big-game coach wins ballgames. The Bulldogs took a 21-10 lead early in the fourth quarter. Texas was about to get the ball back and do its best to put together a scoring drive.
But ol’ Kirby and his coaching staff were too smart for Sarkisian. The Bulldogs pulled off an immaculate squib kick, recovering the ball after it had gone 10 yards downfield. The Texas special teams, on a play Sarkisian said afterward that the team had practiced during the week, wasn’t ready.
Once Georgia recovered the ball, they went down the field on a five-plus-minute drive and scored another touchdown. Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton played an incredible game, hitting his receivers on roll-out passes for easy touchdowns. He had a hand in all five Georgia touchdowns.
Manning finished the game by going by completing 27 of 43 passes for 251 yards with one touchdown and one interception. It wasn’t all his fault that Texas lost, either.
These are the games where Texas has to win to be really taken seriously in any national championship chatter. Sarkisian has not been able to get his players in position to win. Texas is now 7-3 on the season, 4-2 in SEC play.
Of course, Sarkisian said that he felt like his team was prepared to go up against Georgia on the road. The Longhorns had two weeks to prepare for any and all situations that Smart and his crew were going to throw at them.
Yet, in the end, Sarkisian and the Longhorns walked off the field with another big-game loss to their record.
“I would not say that they lost composure,” Sarkisian said about his players’ effort late in the game, according to The Associated Press. “I think we lost some focus, we lost some intensity in the fourth quarter.”
Back in 2021, Sarkisian signed what amounts to a $34.2 million contract to become the Texas head coach, according to Boardroom. He earns a $2,080,000 base salary and will have supplemental salaries of $3,600,000 this season and $3,720,000 next season.
“We messed up a lot of stuff, and you got to look in the mirror first and realize what you could’ve done better,” Texas safety Michael Taaffe said after the defeat.
“Everybody — coaches, players, staff, every person that’s involved in our hunt to win each and every week — has got to be better. You can’t do the pointing finger game until you look at yourself, so I got to be better.”
Sarkisian now sits at 45-20 overall in his tenure at Texas. He’s 2-3 in bowl games. To his credit, and his team’s credit, the Longhorns did reach the College Football Playoff last season. They even reached the Sugar Bowl, only to lose against – guess who? – Smart and the Bulldogs.
Sarkisian has also been pretty adamant about being his own offensive coordinator, handling play-calling duties from the sidelines. Maybe it’s time that Sark really looks in the mirror and hires an offensive coordinator.
Sure, he might be able to get away with being his own OC when playing teams like, oh, Sam Houston State. At Texas, though, the expectations are for national championships, not feel-good records at the end of a season.
Is Texas closer to a national championship now than when Sarkisian took over the Longhorns program? I believe so. Again, Sark is a hell of a football coach who has spent time under the learning tree of former Alabama Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban.
It was Saban who helped rehabilitate, literally and figuratively, Sarkisian’s coaching career and, well, life after things went totally off the rails for Sark as head coach at USC.
The Longhorns have two home games to wrap up the 2025 regular season. Texas hosts Arkansas next Saturday, then has to turn around and face Mike Elko and the Texas A&M Aggies on the following Friday.
Elko has the Aggies playing excellent ball, especially in the light of their very impressive comeback victory over Shane Beamer and South Carolina at a jam-packed Kyle Field on Saturday.
At this point, Sarkisian and Texas might just finish out the regular season with an 8-4 mark. That’s not a College Football Playoff-caliber record at all. It might get Texas into the Texas Bowl again or, well, maybe the Holiday Bowl.
It would be a very disappointing finish to a season where Texas was the preseason No. 1 team in college football. The Longhorns had great expectations heaped upon them by the national college football world.
Manning was being touted (not by himself personally) as Heisman Trophy material. The kid has played his heart out through the season, even showing signs of maturation and improvement in Texas’s previous two games before the Georgia meltdown.
But let me close this by using an anecdote I heard from longtime college football coach Rick Neuheisel, who co-hosts SiriusXM College Sports Radio’s “Full Ride” weekly show with Chris Childers,
This season, after a Texas loss, Neuheisel proffered that, sometimes, Sarkisian’s head coach brain collides with his offensive coordinator brain. Neuheisel suggested that this causes some conflict within Sarkisian’s thought processes in game situations.
I dig that reasoning from Rick.
Personally, I want Sark to succeed. Again, his redemption story is one to be admired and respected all around the college football world.
But Sark has to win the big games. He also needs to make sure his coaching staff, which is coming under some heat, knows their roles and executes properly. He must make sure his players are focused and ready to go, in big games, from the opening snap to the final gun.
Texas fans are not going to be happy one bit with anything less than a national championship at this point.
So, the ball’s in your court, Sark.
Cody Slovensky
Writer
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