Lawyers and Longhorns Season Two With Head Coach Steve Sarkisian

hey I'm coach Sark and this is lawyers and [Music] [Music] longhorns w welcome to lawyers and longhorns we're here with a man who needs no introduction uh coach SAR thanks for coming out appreciate you guys having me thank you coach this is awesome tell us a little about about you where'd you grow up yeah so I grew up in torren California I'm the youngest of seven in my family uh seven children and uh my whole life I thought I was going to be a baseball player and uh I actually went to USC out of high school as a baseball player then transferred back to Junior College played both Sports again and then ended up on the football trajectory and here you are went to BYU and on a lot of stops along the way and now I'm in Austin Texas year four you can believe that what was your position in baseball I was a short stop and a pitcher and I quickly found out I didn't throw hard enough to be a pitcher and I couldn't hit a slider so that was a problem too like I had no path at that point I lost all Paths of like what I could be uh from the from the baseball perspective did you play other sports besides football and baseball I grew up playing soccer um you know thing about it my dad was born and raised in tayron and he came to the US when he was 18 and moved to Boston met my mom full-blooded Irish lady so I'm I'm half Armenian half Irish so soccer in our household is a big deal my brother was a college soccer player played professionally um so soccer in our household was a big deal played that until the ninth grade and then I said enough of that I want to play American football now I like that sport better were you always a quarterback I was and I didn't really want to be one early on I just wanted to play um but then I I found out like you know I was never the most physically gifted player even as I went through college and and played in the CFL but uh the game came to me pretty naturally mentally and so I I used to tell myself I know I'm not as physically gifted as everybody else but I'm going to be the fastest mental player on every snap and I think that's how I kind of gravitated to the coaching World um because I wanted to really learn the game I didn't want to just know the plays to run but why they work predicated on the defense they were playing and vice versa what would what would make this play really hard is if they did this okay what would my answer be so I tried to play out all the scenarios um and I honestly I think that's that's why it's helped me now becoming a coach how'd you end up at BYU I was a junior college transfer and um I had two years remaining to play and I I wanted to go somewhere where I was at least going to put myself in a really good position to earn a starting job I didn't want it to be given to me but the starting quarterback at that time was from my high school and he kept telling me I'm leaving early for the NFL draft his name's John Walsh and sure enough the end of my sophomore season in junior college he declared for the NFL draft I went to BYU and uh started two years played for lval Edwards we were throwing the ball before anybody else was and it was a blast you know we w a bunch of won a bunch of good really good games you did you have a big arm were you no I I was short I did not have a big arm I was slow but but I'll tell you the one thing was like I could throw it pretty accurately like if if I really tried to work hard on ball placement and throwing a catchable ball you know I always I joke with our quarterback now what is the intent when we call a pass to complete it and it doesn't matter if it's 50 yards downfield or if it's two yards behind the line of scrimmage if we don't complete the pass the play's over and so I really try to just be the most accurate passer I could be know the coverages so well that I could anticipate where the ball was supposed to go so that when I threw it to the better athletes of me they could catch and run with it and then it was like a gain a pass completion for 40 yards when reality I threw it about eight yeah but they would they would get all the yards for me was uh was Norm Chow your coordinator then yeah so LEL was was the head coach uh Norm Chow was the coordinator and um super Innovative really what that offense was a little history lesson that was the Air Raid Offense that we were running at BYU but we were running it with tight ends and running backs and obviously the air raid has evolved and you know coach leech and and Hal mummy were G at BYU they left and went on to valdasta and then kenduck Kentucky and it obviously spread and the air raid became the air raid but that's really what we were running and so I had a great relationship with with Coach leech when I was at the University of Washington he was at Washington State we would talk about that offense because he was still running it and that's what I played in in college you ever think about running it now I don't um a little bit of little more history lesson on the air raid the air raid has never won a championship and I think there's some reasons and layers to that there's there's certain ways you have to practice there's certain schemes that I think your defense needs to see well if you're going to show them to your defense and and so I I try to tend lean into um what are the things that are proven that have withstood the test of time and there's definitely a style a pro style of offense that historically has proven to to be successful not to jump ahead but you ever think about doing more Up Tempo um I have and and there's been years when I've totally committed to that you know every year um I like to say we we try to recreate ourselves um we have a system but we still try to recreate ourselves to what's in the best interest of the team that we have now and and so there's been years when I went as fast as I could go because I didn't think we were very good on the o line and it was a way to kind of minimize the defensive line play against our o line and and we had it was it was successful but in the end the hard part about when you just go up Tempo is is at the end of games when you're trying to shorten the game and Shrink possessions it's hard for those teams to go back into that and and then the the winning percentages just just aren't as good so we definitely have a facet of it um that we do utilize in some games more often than others you just what's the game plan and then how we going to try to execute it and then what are the contingency plans in game if that if that original game plan sucks and now we need to go do something else right well you might be the offensive genius just know that every time then we get the ball I'm like let's go up temp go fast go fast I've never heard him say that F hey fast is hey no seriously fast is great when you score fast is not any good when it's three plays and you got to punt it right back to them and your defense is sitting over there on the sideline like we just sat here for 38 seconds back's a lot of Up Tempo talk in this box yes I love that how did you decide you want to get in coaching interestingly enough when I I went when I got done with BYU I went and played three years in in the Canadian football football league and I said I you know I just didn't want to be a lifer in the CFL and so I was like I'm not going to do this I'm going to move back home to California and figure it out and so when I got there I was actually working for a a DOT startup it was in that dot era where like 2000 yeah was like blown up right and so I was working for a couple guys that had just left Cisco Systems and they were doing the startup and they were probably ahead of their time it was actually ingenious idea um but they were ex-athletes and so they allowed me as long as I was in sales as long as I was taking care of my business I could coach and so I started coaching at my junior college and I was like man I really love this this is awesome oddly enough I didn't think I could really make a living doing it though right right well this guy by name of Pete Carroll gets hired at USC and I'm I'm literally the day he gets hired I'm on a sales call at anenberg School of Communications at USC and I Saidi just going to go over and talk to him and he's like okay Sark it's good to see you again why don't you come back and see me tomorrow so I I go back up to SC the next day that next day he hires Norm Chow as the offensive coordinator at USC who was my offensive coordinator at BYU and uh coach Carol offers me a graduate assistant position and I I thought for a minute I have a I have a mortgage I have a car payment I have a baby on the way um and I'm going to go work for 16 Grand but I said I'm going to go for it you know and I B L budgeted for a year to be able to do it and uh I loved it and it shoot it took off and from that point on it's been just goat blazing Trails you know what's the difference between um working with Sabin and working with u u p Carol oh yeah so two really different individuals okay so here's Pete Caroll chewing his gum wearing gloves at PR practice throwing the ball having fun playing the piano in the team meeting over here here's Nick like almost almost military yeah like discipline you know if he smiles at you man he really likes you because he doesn't smile at many people but in the end they're probably closer together behind closed doors than what the public Persona of them is right and at their core they're both brilliant football minds they both have incredible work ethic they're both tremendous leaders all they both know who they are and then what they believe in and what's important to them and then they instill that in the organizations because ultimately they both want the same thing they're both winners they're great competitors and so I was extremely fortunate I'm one of maybe three guys that had an opportunity to work for both myself laye kein and Dan Quinn now with the commanders and so we both probably and I we both probably have taken things from each of them and then ultimately put it into who we are as ourselves um but extremely fortunate to have worked with both those two guys do you ever hear yourself saying things that they say when you're coaching and and yeah I do um and sometimes I'm like man I just sounded just like coach Savin and I told I'd never be Nick Savin or and you just sounded like P Carrol you know like nobody was better than P Carol you could like you know remember I'm in the locker room at USC when we lose to Texas for the national championship and you know devastated right anytime you get that close and then you don't win you're devastated and it would have you would have thought we won his way his ability to to build you up even in in some of the most adverse times he was he was incredible at that you know um but I do I hear some of that in me because I I do believe in in positive reinforcement now there obviously there's times to when you have to get on the guys for for not handling their business but um in the end if Pete Carroll did teach me one thing if if you really love the players they'll love you back you have open dialogue with them and and share things and motivate them where coach Sabin there was a respect Factor you know and might have been a little bit coaching out of fear but they respected that because they knew how he worked and so it was different but yet at the end they were trying to accomplish the same thing how would you describe your philosophies as being as a coach it's interesting I I am a firm believer in personal connection I I think that you know connecting with the individual player players connecting with the staff um creating an environment of want to as opposed to have to and I think that that's what we've done here in in four years it's taken time but I believe in culture like and I believe that culture is organic I believe in personal relationships I believe in connectivity I believe in love um and a lot of times you don't associate football and love like those two words those two words don't don't cross paths um but in the end I I think that our players and our staff know that how I go about my business is with good intentions for them to try to put them in the best position to be successful whatever we're trying to do um but I I think that goes back to how am I walking into the building every day right am I upbeat do I have great energy um am I serving others am I inspiring them to be better today than they were yesterday and if I can create that environment which I think we've we' we've done a pretty good job of then they're going to try to operate in that same space and so um and that was something I had to learn over time because you when when you're a young coach I was 34 as a head coach University of Washington I didn't even know you know and and so I used to ride the emotional roller coaster when we won I was the greatest coach ever when we lost I was the worst right and I think now I've gotten to a much better space to have a level of consistency and that that's probably the biggest thing now in the second half of my career if there's one word I would use for me is consistent and if I'm consistent with our coaches if I'm consistent with our players and our staff um then they know what to expect each day and then generally I'll get I'll get you know the best version of them there's not a lot of coaches that are D1 coaches and a lot of them are your you know competitors or the pros like who do you look to if you've got whether it's a problem in the locker room or I'm looking at this defense and I've I don't know like who are the people you can turn to the there's not like a book how to coach football so how do you figure that out you lean into those that I think you a pretty good relationship with like Lane kein and I have a pretty good relationship we can we can bounce things off of each other Raheem Morris the head coach in Atlanta now the Falcons we have a great relationship with Dan Quinn and I have a great relationship I forged a really good relationship with Kyle Shanahan with the 49ers forged a really good relationship with Shawn McVey uh in in LA and and a really good relationship with Mike McDaniel with the dolphins and a lot of that is because we're kind of from the same school of thought whether it's sister atically or how we like to run our teams and so you know you just try to tap into the people that not that you want them to think like you but their um how they how the recommendation they would make to handle a situation would make sense to me philos as opposed to be something that was totally from left field but I I do still tap into to coach Sabin I still definitely tap into to coach Carol as well what's your plus p on recruiting recruiting I I would say the first thing about recruiting for us naturally we're trying to we're trying to build the most talented roster that we can build right that's my responsibility the University of Texas can I build a team year in and year out that competes for championships there's a caveat to that we never sacrifice character for talent we try our best right we really try our best because our culture is so important to us that sometimes maybe we don't take the guy that everybody on the internet thinks we should take but they don't know maybe some of the things that we know of why wouldn't fit into what we're about because I am a believer in culture beats Talent like you can have the most talented roster in the world but if they play as individuals teams with culture will beat them our goal is to combine talented High character people to make up our culture that's when we're really dangerous right that's when we can win the games we're supposed to win but also win those tough games and tough moments when maybe you're not at your best uh so that's the first part then we we basically have profiles by position that we try to get players to fit whether it's a you know a defensive end no shorter than 63 you know 240 lbs to 255 lbs runs this fast so on and so forth that doesn't mean we only live in that box because there are outliers because there's these unique qualities about him that are maybe he's a 6' one defensive end but he runs a 4440 well you that that can offset those things but at the end when it all boils down I'm I'm really looking for Unique competitors not good not great unique because you you have to have a competitive spirit in my opinion to be good at anything um it's not just about the talent you know the talent might get you through high school but at this level with the teams we have to beat or the guys at your position group that you're competing against if you don't have a unique competitive qualities about you it's going to be really difficult how how do you figure that out like I mean you can see tapa guys and you maybe project oh he's going to grow a little bit or whatever but how do you know that they got the right mentality to it's it's like well I like to FaceTime the guys myself and so when you FaceTime them what are they doing right um and and I'm okay with them even playing the video games because if you're playing a video game you're actually competing and if you think you're really good you're going to tell me about it um when when we're on a visit and we go to Top Golf uh is a guy sitting down on on the couch just looking at his phone or is he actually trying to hit these balls and maybe he's never hit a golf ball in his life but he's trying to get good at it because he doesn't want to not be good at something um a lot of times coaches will watch highlights of players our staff we will do that but we will watch all of his plays and how does he play when they're ahead by 28 points how does he play when they're behind by 28 points you know does he does he pick and choose one to play really hard or not to play hard so we try to look for all those things and then the more you talk to them they tell you right they tell you what's important to them and sometimes they may not exude it all the time but it's in there and then that's our job to to draw it out of them [Music]