We have a second entry for Sunday Surmising today, as we leapfrog from our 2024 CFP analysis to the coaching career of Texas Longhorns Head Coach Steve Sarkisian: something doesn’t add up to us. This is a guy who played college football at BYU, played in the CFL, and coached underneath some famous names before getting his first shot at the big time with the University of Washington. How did he get to Texas?

First, let’s start with his college playing career, in the quarterback legacy for the Cougars: he played two seasons at BYU (1995-1996), leading the nation both years in completion percentage. In fact, he topped his peers in a number of statistical categories in those 25 games he played, including posting the highest QB rating in the country during the 1996 season. The Cougars went 14-1 with a Cotton Bowl win that year, too.

Yet somehow, this was not enough to get Sark into the NFL as a QB, so he ended up in Canada, where he was underwhelming in two years of play (1998-1999). He started his coaching career at a low level in 2000, working with his former community college. Then, he made the leap to USC for its dynasty heydays ahead in 2001, thanks to BYU connections. We do not doubt his cerebral skills, as his physical traits were plain.

For most of the next eight years, he rode the Trojans’ success under Head Coach Pete Carroll all the way to the UW job in 2009, even though he’d never been a head coach at any level before that promotion. He took over a Huskies team that had gone 0-12 under Tyrone Willingham, and in the next five seasons, he posted a 34-29 record with Washington, going to three bowl games (and winning one of them). Solid? Sure. But …

Somehow, an 8-4 mark in 2013 was enough to get USC to hire him as the head coach, and the Huskies managed to lure Chris Petersen away from Boise State to replace him. Petersen proceeded to post a 55-26 record at UW and get the school into the nation’s elite by his fourth season—clearly outdoing the efforts of Sarkisian there. Meanwhile at USC, Sark didn’t last two seasons before being fired five games into 2015.

His sin(s)? Taking over a 10-win team and only posting nine wins in his first year, before losing to his former employers in Game Five of his second year. USC canned him with a 3-2 mark in his second year in Los Angeles; it’s interesting to note, again, that his successor? Took the Trojans to a Rose Bowl victory the following season, outdoing Sarkisian again. So, twice, he “failed” and was outdone by his replacement.

There was the little bit about his drinking problem, too, and we can’t overlook that. But, with two failed/underwhelming head coaching stints at Power 5 schools on his record and a potential substance-abuse issue as well, why would anyone give Sarkisian another chance? Good question. There are some obvious answers, though: his ethnicity and his connections. No BIPOC coaching candidate survives this.

[Ask Willingham.]

But we digress: enter Alabama, where a former colleague (Lane Kiffin) helped convince Nick Saban to give Sark another shot at coaching. If you read yesterday’s piece on Saban, you know our deductions from analyzing Saban’s own coaching career, so Sark suddenly had a chance to learn from the “best” in the SEC at skirting rules (or more probably, outright breaking them). But the deeper lesson? Resources, any which way.

Interestingly, between two different tenures in Alabama (2016-2017, 2019-2020), Sarkisian went to the NFL and floundered with the Atlanta Falcons as the offensive coordinator. What could possibly have been the difference between his success at Bama and his failures in the NFL? Same thing we ask of Saban’s own career, of course, and we have to conclude with the same answer: resources, whether fairly attained or not.

The NFL has equity rules; the SEC did not, at the time. But Sark clearly learned he could do things at Alabama that the Pac-12 never would have allowed him to do at Washington and USC: cheat, in essence. This rehabilitation of his reputation under Saban then ended up landing him the HC job at Texas, one of the better-funded programs in the nation, despite its mostly failures on the national scene since its 2005 MNC.

Then he posted a losing record his first year (2021) in Texas, after taking over a 7-3 team that had won the Alamo Bowl during the Covid season. How did he even keep his job after that disastrous result? Another good question, and the only answer we determine is that the Longhorns knew they were going to jump to the SEC soon—and Sark’s experiences with Alabama would serve Texas well in that upcoming transition.

Bingo.

He improved to 8-5 in his second season (2022), losing the Alamo. Still not quite the results Texas demanded, especially with the SEC move on the horizon. The payoffs arrived in 2023, though, with the NIL rules opening up the Longhorns’ deep pockets—and the transfer portal luring high-talent players to Austin. Texas put up a 12-2 record in 2023, its last one in the Big XII, reaching the CFP for the first time ever.

Ironically, his team lost to Washington in the 2023 CFP semifinals, as Alabama lost to cheating Michigan in the other one. The new world order had arrived in college football, much to the chagrin of Saban—but to the benefit of Sarkisian, who hadn’t been able to coach his way out of a paper bag before NIL “leveled” the playing field, while giving wealthy schools plenty of legal advantage now to build powerhouse squads.

This year, Texas had a chance to win the SEC, but Sark was outcoached in the conference title game by Georgia veteran Kirby Smart, also a Saban disciple. And then, he was once outcoached again against Arizona State before getting lucky in the second overtime, and he was outdone in the CFP semis once more by Ohio State’s Ryan Day. Sarkisian is proving himself to be a weak strategist, like Saban, despite all edges.

Those edges in personnel and resources won’t stop at Texas, though; yet they also won’t stop at places like Georgia, Ohio State, and several other top-flight programs around the nation with the same deep pockets and obsessive commitments to winning. Sooner or later, Sarkisian will have to have an ace in the hole to win it all, or else he won’t last at Texas, either. Maybe Arch Manning is that ace; only time will tell, right?

We’re guessing if he gets fired by the Longhorns, though, there will not be a fourth chance for Sark to coach.