The Joel Klatt Show: A College Football Podcast - Big Noon Conversations: Texas’ Steve Sarkisian on the SEC move & learning from Saban & Pete Carroll

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

FOX Sports’ lead college football analyst Joel Klatt sits down with Texas Head Coach Steve Sarkisian in this episode of The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations. They discuss the pressure that comes with being the Head Coach at Texas and how the move to the SEC will affect his program. The Longhorns coach reflects on what he learned from his two coaching mentors that both stepped away from the sport this offseason – Nick Saban and Pete Carroll – and reveals what he believes was the key to their incredible success. The two also discuss the commonality they share as they discuss sobriety and how being vulnerable in his own life has impacted Sarkisian’s culture-building within his program. Lastly, Coach Sark reveals his best and worst playcalls of his career – with his worst playcall ultimately leading to an iconic moment in Texas history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I was a thermometer. I was walking into whatever the situation was, whatever the temperature was, that's how I responded. And I've gotten to now, I'm a thermostat. I set that temperature. Most influential people in the sport talking about the sport globally. This time on the Joel Flats show's Big Noon Conversations, I talked with Steve Sarkesian, the head coach at the University of Texas. All right, pleased to be here.

in Austin with the head coach at the University of Texas, Steve Sarkesian. Steve, what's up, buddy? What's up? Coach Sark. I've been trying to get down here, wanted to do this last year, but now we finally got you. So I'm super excited. This is awesome. First of all, congratulations on a great year last year. And it didn't come out of nowhere because you had been laying down the foundation of what was about to happen last year. And you and I had talked about that for quite a bit. But before we get to that, I want you to just off the top, what's the best part about being the University of Texas head football coach? Oh, man. I can get into any restaurant I want.

And the food in Austin is great. No, you know what it is? It's not being from Texas, and you hear so much about what it is like to be the Texas head coach. and haven't been fortunate enough to be at some great places. And then you get here and you kind of put the hat on. And myself, you know, I feel like I work for everybody else, you know, and I try to go about my day like that. But man, what comes out of it is how many people support you,

want you to do well, are willing to help in any capacity that they can, whether it's the high school coaches, the Texas High School Coaches Association, what that means. I feel like I'm their head coach because I'm coaching their kids to our donors, our boosters, our student body, the other athletes on campus. And so I just try to do my best to support everybody. But in reality, probably the best part is that everybody's supporting me, knowing that being the flagship program in the state of Texas and being the football program here, we're on the front line. And we represent everything that the Texas Longhorns are about. with that pressure being on the front line you know what what's the old adage uh much is given much is

required sure um so with that comes a lot of pressure you know with this job i would i would argue that your position maybe coach day at ohio state maybe a few others are are some of the unique college coaching positions that have not just pressure but an immense amount of pressure because of the scrutiny that comes around with being the head football coach at Texas or Ohio State or maybe what Coach DeBoer is going to have now following Coach Saban and Alabama. Do you feel that? And how do you wrestle with it? Yeah, I think a couple things.

One, I was fortunate to be a head coach before, right, having been at the University of Washington and what that was in trying to resurrect that program, having been an assistant at USC under Coach Carroll, and then been the head coach there and what that felt like and what that looked like, and then having been an assistant at Alabama under Coach Sabin. And I've always tried to kind of observe and watch, but then also take in my own experiences along the way. And in the end, when I accepted this job, when Chris Delcani and President Hartzell and Chairman Eltyfe offered me the job,

I kind of had that moment to say, know what you're signing up for. And once you kind of come to, that realization that you know what you're signing up for, you understand what the expectations are, why am I taking this job, right? Is it just to be a head coach again, or is it to strive to be a champion? And then can you do it again and again and again? And so that made it pretty easy for me at that point to say, I know why I'm taking the job. So the expectations that others may have for me, mine are probably higher than what everybody else could think of, right?

And I think the second part that comes to that, and this is whatever you do, right, do what you love, love what you do. And I mean, this is the greatest job in America. And I get to come into this building every single day. I get to try to serve others as best I can to try to lift them up to be the best that they can be. And I love what I get to do every day. So I don't look at it that way, even in year one, right? When we were losing games and all that, how consistent could I be with my messaging to the players? How consistent could I be with the administration, with our donors about what we were trying to build and where we were headed?

And then naturally we started to validate that from year one to year two, year two to year three. Now year three to year four. We didn't finish the deal, right? And ultimately that's our goal. So now like the change coming to not just Texas moving to the SEC. I mean, that's a huge change, huge change. Now all of a sudden we have an expanded playoff. And, you know, the seismic shifts that have been happening in college football,

and yet you guys are trying to navigate this move to the SEC. Right. How has it affected the way that you want to build your program, if at all? Right. So what's unique about this, I feel like college football started to really change in this era. It's changed every era, right? Yeah, I mean, it's changed forever. There's been changes.

But in this era, I feel like right when I took this job. When I came, I came right at the tail end of that COVID season. Right? We had the 2020 season in COVID. And coming out of that COVID season, all of a sudden, the NCAA said, we're going to have this thing called the transfer portal. We're going to adjust it. Okay.

I mean, you could argue, not to interrupt it. They threw up their hands. Yeah, like, let's wrap our brain around that. Floodgates. Okay, so that was the first part of like, okay, we've got this thing, the transfer portal now. So you mean every kid can transfer every year whenever they want. Oh, wait, we're going to have these windows.

Okay, cool. But there's two windows. So that was the first thing that happened. The second thing was this thing called NIL that's come into play since we've been here. And all right, what does that look like? And now, as we're seeing, it's moving in a direction when it's like, do whatever you want, basically, right? So we're trying to navigate that whole thing. And we're not going to police anything.

Yeah, so we're going through that one. Then there's this whole thing of called conference realignment. And oh, by the way, Texas is on the front line of that. We're going to the SEC and we're the bad guys because we were the ones that decided to go first. And then the floodgates opened on that. And we've got USC and Oregon and U.S.A. going to the Big Ten. We've got Call and Stafford playing in the ACC. I mean, all sorts of stuff has been happening.

And so all these different things. And then all of a sudden now the college football playoff is shifting. And now we're going to, to, to, 12 and now it's, is it 14 down the road and all that. And so naturally over time that we've been here, it's like, what is the one thing that we can control? All this other stuff is happening, and we have to adapt, right? You have to continually adapt in college football. That was something Coach Saban had taught me early on in my time there, adapt or die. There's a reason dinosaurs aren't on the earth anymore, right? They couldn't adapt. And so we've had to adapt, right, as this has gone

on. But it all comes back to our culture, right? And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, of all the stuff that's happening, how good can our culture be in this building, right? Whether it's the players, whether it's the support staff, whether it's the coaching staff, whether it's the administration, is everybody on the same accord? Is everybody talking the same language? Is everybody working together? Do we have a healthy environment that people want to come in here every day or do they have to come here every day? And are they looking to see what's on the other side of the fence?

Is the grass greener? And that's not just players. Coaches are moving around the country now too, more than ever. And so how do we create an environment where people want to be here every day and are striving for a common goal and committed to this thing collectively? And in turn, through team success, now come the individual accolades, awards, honors, and draft picks and things of that nature. And I think that's one thing that we've been really consistent with. And I think that's where the joy comes from for me as a coach is that I feel so good about what we've built culturally. Granted, we've got good players and all that and we've got great facilities.

but the culture thing is the one thing to me that I'm most proud of because I don't feel like sometimes I hear other coaches complaining about different things in their program. I'm kind of like, we don't really deal with that as much, you know, because I think it's who we are on a daily basis. So it's fascinating that you talk about that the way that you do because you can make an argument. And by the way, this goes for all of us in our individual lives as a family. the more things change and the more things get chaotic outside, the more you have to really focus on,

what do I really control? My dad was big into the only thing you can control is your own effort level. My dad was a former Marine, and that's what he would pound into us. That's the only thing you have total control over. And since you've been here, you and I constantly talk about this culture

that you're building, and I'm so fascinated because you seem to be not only, intensely focused on it, but also involved in it. And here's what I mean by that in two different ways. And you and I share this. I'm coming up on 13 years sober. You're also sober. That was a huge shift in my life and a commitment that I had to make. The other commitment I had to make is how open was I going to be about it? How forthright was I going to be about it, whether that was with my family or those around me. You've had to make that same choice. That choice for you

and how open you are with it, in particular with your team, is almost central to what you guys do from a culture standpoint. How did you make that decision? Well, some of them got made for me. I'll be honest with you, right? Same, same, by the way. So when all of my stuff occurred initially, it was national news. Sure. I mean, it was on the ticker, right? It was everywhere. It was on every sports talk radio show.

So it really wasn't like something that I could hide from, right? And so the reality was, okay, this is public knowledge. This is public information. I'm a public figure at this point. Okay, so how are you going to address it? How are you going to deal with it? Then as I navigated my way through it and being open and honest with those that I was close to, and I got back into the coaching ranks,

I quickly realized in coaching, there's this thing called negative recruiting. I don't know if you've ever heard of this, Joel, but some coaches love to talk about another school or another coach. And naturally, it was not easy to figure out that other schools and other coaches were going to try to use that against me. And so I really became open, honest, and vulnerable with the recruits first and their families first to talk through my story. Then I came to find out that why would I not want to share all of that with our team? Because I always felt like 18 to 22 year old males. I mean, if there's a guarded group of individuals in our society, it's that group, right? Trust is not at the highest level.

Being vulnerable, being open, being honest, not at the top of the priority list for a lot of young men. We're guarded. We want to suppress things. We want to keep things down. So how do I get them to feel comfortable to do that? Well, why don't I share? Why don't I become vulnerable? Why don't I give them my story?

Why don't I give my story uncut, right? It's the version that they're sitting in their chairs thinking, I can't believe Coach Sark just said all that to us. To a point to where I've given them a platform to say, it's okay to be vulnerable, to be honest, to open up, to share issues. Nobody's judging you. we're all just looking to support one another. And we've tried to cultivate that through a process throughout summer

and in through training camp. Every year I do it. Every year at the start of the summer, I tell my story. And there's some guys that sit in that team room that have sat in there for three, four years now. I've heard the same story. And every time they pick up a little something different. Interesting.

I've told that story last summer. My own son was sitting in that room, right? And what a perspective that was for him to hear my story now sitting in a chair as one of the players on the team, our own coaches. But then for me, then it does go to our assistant coaches. They tell their stories. And none of us are perfect. We've all got things in our past that we've had to work through and continue to work through. So now we've created a platform for the players to start to share. And now what happens is there's some empathy. I know what you're going through, man. And I know when, if you look a little off today, I'd have

something to tap into, whatever it might be. And in the end, I think that really did draw us closer. But every year you have to recreate it, right? I lose 25, 30 guys that move on. And here comes a new batch of 25, 30 guys. And how do we get them back into our culture? How do we get them to understand it's okay to talk about what's going on in our lives? And Coach Sark's actually here to help you.

He's not here to look for what's wrong with you so that he can cut you and move on to the next kid. It's actually work with you to try to make you the best person that you could be. It's interesting. You talk about this culture of vulnerability. And I could feel that when I came in, in particular this year, I came in to do the Kansas State game. And just sitting with a couple of your players. I remember sitting with Jonathan Brooks specifically. And I just thought to myself like, man, it's not just that he's an impressive kid.

Listen, there's impressive kids all over the country. You know that. Every school. But there was something different about the way Jonathan Brooks talked about his teammates. That I was like, that's different. And I think it goes to the heart of this culture of vulnerability. Because so often in this business, I walk into all these, I talk with all of you, you know. And everybody talks about culture.

But everyone talks about culture in terms of performance, accountability, and all of those things are great. And we want our kids to perform and to be accountable. But this culture of vulnerability certainly resonated with last year's group. Sure. And I can sense that when I was with Jonathan Brooks. The only other team that I sensed that with was Michigan. They had a really good core group of older players that cared about each other. How did you see your culture manifest on the field last year in a way that was tangible to the scoreboard?

No, I think that's a great point. Because first of all, I always chuckle when I go into different buildings. You try to do some professional development. I see a sign that says culture thinking, eh, I don't know. Do you know what I always think when I see this? Because I see them too. What culture? Yeah.

Like define it for me, culture. What does that mean? There's a lot of different cultures. For sure. I've stepped into buildings and teams and seen teams and played on teams where the culture was terrible. Yeah. So it's like you can put up sign of culture.

It's like, we got a culture of turds. Yeah. It's like, we don't want that. Because to me, culture is organic. It's not something that you list out in a team meeting. I think it naturally occurs, right? Every family dynamic has its own culture, right? And I think that starts at the top, right?

How are your parents? How are you raised? You know, what is leadership? Nowadays I get a chuckle. I was reading something a good friend of mine, John Gordon, he put out this morning, was about leadership isn't what you put on social media. It's how you live every day. And so what is the example that we give to the culture that we want as coaches that the players now can look to to say, hey, that is something I want to emulate.

That is somebody I want to be like. That is somebody I want to shape my life towards. And then ultimately what happens, like I was telling the group last year at the end of the year. Not only did they buy into our idea of the culture, I felt like the leaders on that team last year elevated it. We went to another space that I didn't know a college football team could go to. Now, where did that show up? I think culture shows up against Kansas State. Yeah, tough game.

We're controlling the whole game. We turn the ball over. Next thing you know you go to overtime, and K-States got four plays inside the five-yard line. And every one of those plays, somebody different made the play. It wasn't, you know, Tavondre Sweat didn't make four straight plays. You know, Ryan Watts made a play. Jodd A. Baron makes a play. Jalen Ford makes a play.

Baron Sorrell makes a play. And so this idea, to me, of culture and when you're vulnerable and you do really get to know the guy next to you, now you get that sense of accountability. Now it's like, my brothers are counting on me. And you know what? I can count on that guy. I know, I know what he's about. He's going to be where he's supposed to be. I think that's a great example.

I think the third long play against TCU, another game that kind of got sideways for a second. We had to make a play. A.D. Mitchell, who was new to our program, Quinn trusted him to go make that play on that go on that go ball. Fourth and one against Houston in the fourth quarter. You know, recognizing the route combination and Jodd A. Barron, you know, weaving his way through it on the sprint out and getting that ball knocked down on fourth down. So there's a bunch of those things. There's a play against Iowa State last year where Jonathan Brooks had hurt his knee the week before. We went to Iowa State. Cedric Baxter became kind of the bell cow.

And it was late. It was tiring. It was a physical game. And it was fourth down. And Jaden Blue stepped in the huddle. And we needed to get this fourth down to solidify the game. He said, Coach, let me get the ball. And C.J. Baxter and the line said, yeah, Blue's got it. And Jordan Winnington says, Blue, just get behind me. And we hand the ball to Jaden Blue, who was our third, arguably 14 tailback at that time, goes and finds a hard.

yard to get a first down. And so to me, all those little kinds of things, I think that's why you make those plays in games because guys count on one another because they had an opportunity to get vulnerable and get to know one another. Yeah, it's interesting. John Gordon is really good. Love him. Love all of his stuff. And one of the other things that I would... He comes every year, by the way. Well, you do a speaker series. I mean, you bring a lot of guys in like that Culture Wednesday, I know. How does that man, Fast. So we do what's called Culture Wednesday, every Wednesday all summer long. So we do our workouts Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Wednesdays are about us as individuals, right? Mind, body,

soul, recovery, things of that nature. We start every day with Culture Wednesday and we pick a topic. I always share first. Some days we do gratitude trees. Yeah. Or what are we really grateful for, man? Like everybody wants, what else can I get? Everybody's looking at their phone about somebody else what they're doing, what vacation they're on, what car they're driving, what shoes they're wearing. But what about some of the things that I have that I'm really grateful for? Right? And so we kind of do that.

We do a lot of exercises like that. And then we'll bring in speakers. And John Gordon's great because the premise of everything that he talks about is about love. Right? And yes, there's some great things which we just, I was just talking about there, about leadership and things,

but everything comes back to love. Right? And this idea about loving one another, being a teammate of love, leading through love, serving through love, that's what you're trying to create, right? Because when you have love, then you have compassion, then you have empathy, and then you feel for somebody else, and then you'll do anything for them to try to help them get through whatever they're going through. And so John is fantastic, and he comes in every year and speaks to the guys.

Speaking of leadership, you have, I don't want to say just like fortunate, but in your gratitude tree, I'm sure there's like. I got to coach under Pete Carroll and I got a coach under Nick Saban and be with the Falcons and Matt Ryan. You've gotten to coach great players, coach under great coaches, but specifically two guys that just stepped away.

Pete Carroll, Nick Saban. They step away on basically the same day. Same day. And those are, I would have to imagine, please correct me if I'm wrong, the most influential coaching influences in your career. Hands down. What did each of them

bring to you. Crazy to think. I'll say this in our in my era of coaching the three greatest of all time right if you put coach save and coach Carroll and Bill Belichick. Yeah I would agree. Right. I mean that's that era right and those guys in their organizations that they were part of. The biggest thing I got from those two, dramatically different personalities. Here's Pete Carroll. He's bouncing around. He's chewing gum. He's playing catch every day. He's got his gloves on. He's creating an environment of energy and the guys are flying around. Here's Nick Saban. It's like the methodical regiment, the discipline of this is how we're going to go about our business and this is the approach. But in the end, they're both striving for the exact same thing, which is being champions.

They're both highly competitive, two of the most competitive humans I've ever been around, and they're both extremely successful. But what I came to find out in my time, having been with Coach Carroll, then I get back with Coach Sabin, and asking those questions were, if you look at their careers, the second half of their careers is when they really took off. Yeah, I would argue way more successful than the first. Not even close, right? Both of them right around 50, and then the last 20, 22 years,

both 72, have been the greatest years of their careers. Well, why is that? What happened? And so I asked them both the exact same question and really got the exact same answer. they figured out who they were. And then they coached who they were rather than trying to be something that they're not.

And because when you try to be something you're not, when adversity strikes, the real you comes out, and then everybody around you like, who the hell's that guy? Like that's not who he was yesterday and the day before, but all of a sudden, here's this guy that comes out. And I think that for me was probably the biggest thing because, you remember I was 34 years old? I was the head coached University of Washington.

I didn't know what the heck was going on. One day I was like this, the next day I was like this. I was, I was, and that time, and I use this analogy, I was a thermometer. I was walking into whatever the situation was, whatever the temperature was, that's how I responded. And I've gotten to now, I'm a thermostat. I set that temperature for how I want it to be every day, and then others can either buy into that temperature or not. And so if you figure out who you are, and then you try to add. act in accordance to who you are as consistently as possible.

So everybody knows what to expect. And I think that's the beauty of having an opportunity to work for those two guys. They're drastically different, but they figured out who they were. Pete Carroll wasn't following Bill Pard Parcells in New England anymore, trying to be, like, how do I be Bill Parcells but still be Pete Carroll? It didn't have to do that anymore, right? Nick Saban figured out who he was. I see so many coaches now that left those trees of those two guys

that tried to be P. Carroll, tried to be Nick Saban, and failed miserably. Yes. Because they weren't trying to be themselves. But still, hold on to some of the premises of the things that were really good in that program. And like I said, I feel like I've been fortunate to work for two amazing men in our sport that have been tremendous. And the life lessons I learned from them well beyond football that I've been able to apply, but apply in a way that fits me.

so there's a consistency to the approach that I give every day. I love the analogy that you gave there, the thermometer and the thermostat. I've used you're either the refrigerator or you're the carton of milk. You're either going to turn into everybody, whatever temperature is around you or you're going to turn everything into your temperature. That's exactly right. Which is the exact same same exact thing. But in order to do that, there has to not just be a self-believe.

not just be a confidence. There has to be a presence and a groundedness about, you know, those guys, Nick Saban wasn't comparing himself to anybody else. Pete Carroll wasn't comparing himself. And in this profession, what I see is guys comparing all the time. All the time. My program, my style, my assistants, my players to all of these other places. And inevitably, it doesn't work.

And I would make the argument. I think it's why we have such high turnover is that the comparison in our industry is so high. And now we're seeing it with players too. Which brings me to Nick's comments after he retired. He was and has been incredibly forthright with his displeasure with where we're at in college football. And what he thinks that's done to the young man participating. in college football. You know, he basically said, my conversations were, how much am I going to play, and how much

are you going to pay me? And he decided that it's not for him. In this environment, how do you grow, also adapt to not be a dinosaur, and succeed even with these things that he was talking about? Well, I think this. I think one, why did you choose to come to Texas? Right? And there's a formula to that.

If you lead with NIL to get a young man to come to your school, then that's why he came there. Then a year from now, what's he going to ask about first? NIL. And so our kind of perspective on this and our approach to this is we've got an amazing product here. The history and tradition of Texas football is second to none. The education, the quality of education at UT is incredible. The coaching staff we have, the development of our players,

the trajectory of what we've done from year one to year two to year three of our program, the city of Austin, all these things that we're talking about, that's why I want you to come to the University of Texas. NIL doesn't come up. That should be the last reason to choose to go to a school, whether it's Texas or any other school. And then if you take players predicated off of NIL, that you want them so bad that you're willing to go to whatever length

and whatever degree to get that kid from an NIL perspective, of course that's what he's going to talk about the very next year when you bring him into your office. And so we try to create a culture that is a little bit different that way. I think we've got a healthy NIL program here. Our Texas One Fund is fantastic. But I got a lot of players that could probably go to another school and make more money. But I think we've created a culture that they like being part of.

They get treated really well. They feel like they're getting developed on and off the field. They've got a brotherhood with their teammates in that locker room that they succeed with. And we talk to that stuff and we work to that stuff. And I'll tell you this, you don't play more because you have more NIL here. I think we make that very clear as well. The best players play that give us the best chance to be successful as a team that do things the right way on and off the field.

And you may have a great NIL deal. this year, if you don't play, you're probably not going to have a great one next year. And maybe you're better suited for somewhere else if that's what's important to you. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. All of that is way easier said than done. Right. And yet you guys have been able to navigate this with less disruptions than others, I would just say, categorically.

And yet, I can't imagine the difficulty as a head coach of navigating those two to three weeks in December when your season ends or continues, by the way, into a conference championship game. Maybe you make the playoff. And by the way, now it's going to be more teams that make the playoff. And high school players are going to sign. and the portal is open. Like, one, what are we doing? Two, how difficult is that period?

And what specifically is the most difficult part? That was the hardest month of the year for me last year. You got to think about it. We played in a Big 12 championship game. We qualified for the CFP. We were playing the Sugar Bowl against Washington. We were signing a really good high school class, a top three, top four high school class.

and we thought we might have some portal needs. We weren't quite sure. So you have to start to recruit these kids as they go into the portal. And that was extremely challenging because as an offensive head coach and the play caller, I want a game plan. I mean, Kaelin had a really good team in Washington.

We had to get ready for. We wanted to solidify this class. I wanted to go on all these home visits. I think that that's a sign of respect to go into the homes of the kids we're signing. Here's the head coach. Your son, you're giving your son. to us. We're going to take what you've done and we're going to try to continue to build him up.

And oh, by the way, every morning I wake up and there's 150, 200, 300, 400 more kids in the portal that day that we're trying to navigate through and practice with our team. That month was really difficult and quite frankly a little out of control. I'm hopeful moving forward that we can get the timing of this a little bit better. I've been a proponent all along of moving signing day up to that first Wednesday prior to the conference championship game. So all of your high school kids can sign. That gets put to bed. Before a portal.

Then the portal can open that Monday after that conference championship weekend. And then what I would say, you can't enter the portal as long as your team is still in the college football playoff. Because I just don't know how you have those conversations with your. kids as you're trying to get them ready to play a game that next week of who's going to be in, who's going to be not. Because to me, the four, five, six kids that you're talking to, that's taken away from the other 114 kids on your roster and their ability to try to go achieve something that is special,

unique and great with an opportunity. So I do think we're a work in progress in college football. I think this too. I think our game is at an all-time high. Yeah. I think the- I say it in my show all the time. The publicity, the exposure, the conversations, I think our weekly games are fantastic.

They mean something. They matter. We're not perfect. That's okay. Nothing's perfect. We just got to keep trying to chop wood and move it in a positive direction that hopefully over time, everybody can feel comfortable with this new era of college football. It's new.

There's nothing wrong with new. Change is inevitable. We're changing. That's okay. Let's just change it in a positive way. I think what people fail to realize is how much change has taken place before this era. Everyone just thinks like, man, it all changed. It's like, well, it's been changing for years and forever and ever and ever.

As Chip Kelly always puts it, and only how Chip can, you know, he kind of sits there. He loves that line from River runs through it, nothing perfect lasts forever except in our memory. And he was like, that's college football. And I'm like, okay, that's good. I don't want to give him too much credit, but that's good. You touched on one thing in that answer that I would like to finish with, and that is the idea of the head coach being the play caller in the midst of all of this change that we're seeing in college football.

We saw this off-season Ryan Day, another excellent play caller, give up those duties and brought in, who I just mentioned, Chip Kelly, to call his offense. How sustainable is it, do you? think to maintain your position as the play caller, the head coach, CEO at Texas? I think it's sustainable. I think the thing for me, and I can't speak for everybody else, you try to hire really good people as best you can and people who are really competent and excel at what they do. And then you try to get them to understand the way we think, the way I think is the head coach, so that they can make some of the day-to-day operational

decisions on different things. We can have a meeting. I can talk of those four or five things and then they can go handle those things. That could be Kyle Flood or offensive line coach, offensive coordinator and AJ Milley. That could be Brandon Harris or general manager. That could be John Bianco with sports

information. That could be Chris O'Connie with administration. Whatever, whatever that is, right? And so as you touch these different facets, it's like I can still be kind of touching all those things, but in trusting them to make sure that it gets followed through with. And I think that was something that I was obviously extremely impressed with with Coach Saban

and what he did with Coach Carroll, his ability to manage those things. You know, in the NFL, he was really the president of football operations as well with the Seahawks. And so, like I said, I just think I was fortunate to be around men that weren't looking at life through a straw, right? I mean, those guys are very worldly, they're very aware, they're very in tune in touch with what's going on. And I see a lot of other coaches that look at this thing through a straw, and they can't see what's going on around them. And so I think I was trained really well. I was fortunate.

I hopefully I can call plays as long as I can. As long as I can see that dang call sheet, my eyes. I just turned 50 this year, so I don't know if I'm going to, how well I can see that. You're going to go Lincoln Riley style on the, like, the little card? I don't ever want to go to the glasses hanging off the tip of my nose. Well, this year you're going to be having to call the play. I can't wait. I love the coach to play.

Again, another cool change. Yes, it's a good change. Yes. We're talking about coach to player communication. Next year in college football, coaches be able to call plays. A quarterback will hear it in the hell. The NFL kickoff.

I mean, look at what's going on now. I mean, the change is inevitable. Okay. Play calling. I'm going to end with something you probably don't want to talk about and then a good one. Okay.

What's the worst play call you've ever made? And do you remember it? Oh, my gosh. Let me think about this. Well, yeah, I know exactly what it was. Fourth and two. USC playing Texas, National Championship game. Wait, you don't like the call?

Well... Okay, you ran power. We ran power, and we had been running at all games. I think you average 12 yards of carry on that specific play with Lindell White. But here's my thing about play calling. Play calls are good when they work. They're terrible when the play doesn't work. That's the history of play calls.

Can you say that that was your worst play call when it's Texas who actually beat USC? It's on my chest. I know, I got to be able to say that. I don't know. That one always, that play I'll never forget. I'm sure. It's probably, it's probably one of the biggest, the biggest reasons why I'll never forget that.

I want a million play calls back. I don't know if they were the worst play call at me. Okay, how about the best? Now let's go, what, do you remember a play in your career that you can remember and you're just like, man, that was really good? I'd go this year. We were playing Oklahoma State, the Big 12 championship game.

And I was sitting with Coach Millie, our quarterback coach, the night before the game. We had an early kick. It was the night before the game. And I said, hey, the first time we get third and two, third and three, like, I'm going to go in with the odds. We're going to get man coverage. And we called a double reverse pass and hit J.T. Sanders wide open for a test. I said, that's going to be the call. I don't care if we're on our own 10.

or if we're going in, that's the call. And sure enough, it came up in the game and our guys hit it and we hit JT. And like the whole side, all of our kids know. Yeah, they know what's coming. And so when we called it and for it to hit the way that it hit, it was pretty special deal. Man, that's great. I remember one, and it's nondescript that you made. It was I always remember the ones that I'm in the booth for.

Right. I was in a couple of years ago for an Oklahoma State game. It's a really good game. They ended up winning the game. but you remember they ran that heavy third down coverage where they would just sit in the chains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I told our crew Friday night, I said, I bet you on third and medium, Sark runs right down the middle of the field at some point. Yeah.

At some point with a tight end or a slot. And you guys did it. Marcus Washington. You had Marcus Washington. I remember that. And I was like, yeah, I knew he would do it. I knew he would do it. Oh, man. Sorry, Coach Gundy. Sorry.

He beat us that day. He had our number for a couple years, but we got him last year. I appreciate your time, man. Thank you. This has been really fun. This is great. Yeah, you bet. It was great. Thanks, y'all.