San Antonio is hosting the Texas High School Coaches Association Clinic this week, and Coach Sarkisian held a 15-minute Q&A style press conference and was asked a bevy of things below - I transcribed it and kept as many tidbits as possible inside the answers to give a real feel on what he thinks of the Early Signing Period, Helmet Communication, New Coaches and Pre-Season Polls, and Rankings
The Presser began with Coach Sarkisian answering a question about the Pros/Cons of Helmet Communication and his plan for utilizing both Helmet communication and Sideline Signals.
Sark: You know, there's a lot of talk right now that the teams that go fast, that really want to go fast, that this is a distinct advantage for them because now you can talk directly to the quarterback. I'm holding out on that opinion, because the other 10 players still need to know what to do, right?
Yes, I can talk to the quarterback, but how do I, how do I get the receivers in alignment and everybody still knowing those plays? Would it minimize some of the signaling on offense, I don't know necessarily that they're going to be able to go faster because they still have to communicate to all those people.
For a team like us, whose very multiple, multiple personnel groupings, formations, motion shifts. Sometimes we go fast, sometimes we huddle, sometimes we're somewhere in between. It does allow us to be a bit more efficient in deciding what tempo we're going to operate in or what personnel grouping we're going to use.
Having spent some time in the NFL and calling plays in the NFL, is that you can really communicate with the quarterback and sometimes just voice inflection from the coach helps the quarterback understand the importance of something in a play. It does allow you to give some subtle tips and reminders and it may not always be for the quarterback. It may be for the running back or the right guard, whoever that is.
But I also think there's a real challenge defensively because just to think that one player on defense has a headset in, you still have to get, like I said, get that call to all 11 players on the field. And if a team's going with tempo, that's going to be difficult to do.
So, I just don't think we can solely rely on the helmet coach the player communication, that that's the end all, be all. We still have to have our mechanisms in place to communicate with all 11 players that are on the field. Whether that's the signals on the field once the player gets that call. That's probably the challenge and it's going to be a little bit of a work in progress because the college game is drastically different than the NFL.
In the NFL, everybody huddles, you know, until two minute and guys start going no-huddle. In college football, there are a lot more no-huddle aspects to what teams do.
So the playcaller, especially defensively is going to have to really be on point. Is this team trying to go fast or not? And I think it's important that the play caller doesn't panic that we show a lot of composure as a coaching staff to get our players the call in a timely fashion. But let's not be too quick to jump to the conclusion that they're necessarily going fast.
And so there's layers to this thing that we are. We worked through in spring ball, but then we're gonna have to continue to work through in training camp and really the first few weeks of the season.
Q(Bohls): You're picked second behind Georgia in the preseason media poll. Does that mean anything to you? Flattering? Do you take confidence in that?
Sark: I always do this exercise with the team and I'll do it again, I'll show the preseason poll, and I'll show the preseason All-SEC team and I'll probably show four or five headlines of articles of how great we're supposed to be. And then I'll probably show another seven or eight articles or headlines or quotes from Coach Saban saying we're not going to run the SEC. Just as a reminder that people's opinions of us before we ever even play a game really don't matter. What we do is what matters.
Do I think we have a pretty good team? Sure, I do.
You know, and I didn't shy away from that at media days, but at the end of the day, it's not about what other people think. It's not about what we say we're going to do. It's about our actions. It's about the way we actually perform and that's going to be our focus. So it just kind of is what it is, you know, I think it's great for college football.
I'll say that I love preseason polls. I love preseason all-conference teams and all-american teams because it gives the college football fan and the pundits stuff to talk about. And it keeps college football at the forefront of what's going on. And like I said, I think our sport is at an all-time high from a popularity standpoint. And part of that is some of this pre-season stuff. Part of it is media days and things of that nature. Where we fall is irrelevant, we have to go play the games, and we have to perform, and we have to work through the adversity that we get faced with, and we gotta rely on depth, and we gotta continue to develop our players as the season goes on. We gotta keep working on our culture and we gotta make sure that we have the right mental intensity, the right mental fortitude week in and week out to perform to the best of our ability.
Bohls: Follow up. Like in 2009 Texas was in the National Championship game and went 5-7 the next year. So you just mentioned the mental side. Is that something you're going to have to stress even more than usual because you're coming off such a great year?
Sark: I think from where we were as a program over the last decade to where we got to last season, I think we still have a really hungry football team. I think we got a taste of what it’s like being in a playoff game tastes like.
I also think the way it ended left a pretty bad taste in our mouths. So I think we've got a very hungry football team that wants to get back. And they've shown me nothing but the right type of work ethic, the right type of mindset throughout the entire off-season, throughout this summer, that I'm not too concerned with complacency.
Q: You lost some special assistants from last year and had some people in support roles move on. Just wondering whether it was Scotty Hazleton or some of those special assistants or Chris Gilbert coming back or Bill Rees coming in. What were you looking for in those specific roles? What led you to hire the guys you hired and the ability now to have more coaches actually coach your practice, how much did that impact who you wanted to add in those support roles?
Sark: You know, when I look at openings, can they make us better than we were? And where are our needs and what type of impact might somebody have in our program?
I'll start with Chris Gilbert. - I hated it when he left. I understood why he left and going to North Texas. I understood all that, but I knew the type of impact that he had in our program. And his relationship with the high school coaches, his relationship with the recruits and their families, his relationships with the current players on our roster.
He has a really good eye for me. Even in practice, I'll bounce things off of him post-practice, post-game. Just kind of the mindset where we're at as a team, so I do lean into Coach Gilbert that way, and it's great having him back, for sure.
Scotty Hazleton, you know, when you assess our season last year, one area where I think we all could agree where we can improve is in pass defense. As I said, pass defense has layers to it. If you want to be a really good pass-defensive team, you've got to have the ability to affect the quarterback, sack the quarterback, and put pressure on the quarterback, make him uncomfortable. If you want to be really good at pass defense, you have to have enough schematic variety, but yet be good at those schemes. And we needed that as a staff.
And then you have to have the players and the personnel that can guard people and make plays on the ball in tight coverage and things of that nature. I've always admired Scotty from a distance. I've known his history, his track record and his connection to Gus Bradley and Monte Kiffin and the Tampa-2 stuff. You know, his connection to get involved in kind of the system that I knew at Alabama of a lot of the combo coverage stuff. So to bring in a guy like that maybe can give us a little bit more variety coverage-wise, that was big.
Bringing Bill Rees on board, Just the expertise that he has, he's been doing it a long, long time.
You know, Coach Saban generally doesn't hire people who aren't good at what they do. And if they aren't good at what they do, they generally don't last but one year and the fact that he was with Coach Saban more than one year. I leaned into Coach Saban a lot when I got his recommendation on Bill. We lost a couple of people, I really felt like we were upgrading at that spot from an evaluation standpoint, not only the high school player evaluation, but potential portal evaluations, but then also evaluating our own roster. And where are we?
He's done it at the highest level of the NFL. He's obviously done it at the highest level of the college game with Notre Dame and Alabama. So I think all three of those guys are going to be impactful for our program.
Q: This summer seems like there's been a lot of emphasis on recruiting. Everyone's fighting to get the official visits, is it important to you to try to wrap things up before the season and then be able to focus on things after the season when the portal opens back up? Are you trying to get that class, I guess, put together before fall camp as much as you can and with decisions that do go different ways throughout the summer. How do you guys attack that once the kids are committed elsewhere? Or is there more finality to that, I guess, in this NIL era, to where you maybe move on and, you know, look elsewhere?
Sark: I've never been the one to panic in recruiting. I think history kind of shows we usually close pretty good as we get into the season, as we get into December, as we get closer to that.
I do believe a lot of times in the summer right now, a lot of recruiting is kind of the hype machine. But you actually have to put the product on the field and you have to play, you have to perform. How do certain players in your program develop? That they sold you on, you're just like him, but actually, how does he play? We believe in our process. We're definitely a relationship-based operation and we don't forego those relationships when a young man commits to another school.
I'm sure just like kids that commit to us, they're not stopping talking to the guys that are committed to us either. At the end of the day, I think we've got a pretty good process and, you know, I always say, I just want to make sure the kids that commit to us are committing us for the right reasons and that they're coming to the University of Texas for the right reasons.
Sometimes those things bear themselves out, you know. Kelvin Banks wasn't committed to us at this time when he decided to come and he's a Preseason All-American. Anthony Hill wasn't committed to us at this time and he's a pretty good player for us. So, over time we continue to build our relationships with the players in our program. And some of them decide to come and some of them don't. But at the end of the day, when we assess our recruiting classes, are we addressing the needs that are on our roster?
Are we building a team that we think can be better next year than it was this year? We're always trying to do those things. And do they fit us? Do they fit us from a character standpoint? Do they fit us from a cultural standpoint? Are they going to be somebody that comes onto our team and enhances our culture, or are they going to be an anchor that we have to keep yanking along?
So, it's not always about the number of stars they have, it's about do they fit what we're about. So again, to go back to my very first statement, I'm generally not one to panic in recruiting, especially in the middle of June and July. Let's talk in December and see where we land.
Q: As the particulars of House v. NCAA continue towards being finalized, or at least go before a judge, Have you been given any indication of what a roster cap might look like, and short of that, do you have an opinion at this point?
Sark: No, we really haven't. You know, I think there’s the powers that be are working themselves through that. And there's a lot of things on the table, what that's going to look like, from roster cap to revenue sharing and how that's going to look in the end, I can look at that down the road.
More important for me is what are we doing this year, I just want to make sure I'm coaching next year when that comes out. So you have to focus on what are we doing this year and how are we maximizing the team that we have this year to put them in the best position to be successful and be the type of team that I think we can have.
Q: It feels like the recruiting calendar keeps moving earlier in the year. I know this year they introduced contacting underclassmen in June. Pushing for summer Signing Day, there's been some talk about that. Just wanted to get your take on that. What do you see as those scenarios? Are they an advantage? What are the pros and cons? What are your personal thoughts?
Sark: Yeah, I think the visits with the Juniors on campus, they're proposing now for January as well as in spring recruiting are positive because so many kids now are taking official visits in the Summer.
And it's hard to identify the personality of a kid if you've never met mom and dad and had a real conversation and a real sit down and had some discussions with them. Because at the end of the day, these kids are committing very early. And how do you know them? Because at the end of the day, we're held to the standard of who they are when we get them, right?
And so if you don't get to know the parents, generally speaking, the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. And so you gotta get to know the parents, you gotta get to know the young men, you gotta be able to spend time, you gotta be able to have those dialogues with them. So that when you do get them on campus, hopefully, they fit your culture and what you're about.
Quite frankly, I’m a little hesitant about the summer signing period. Because I think you learn a lot about players in their senior year. Our sport, development is so important in 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade. And then when we get them, that development, right, into the NFL. And so, you know, we're sometimes passing judgment on kids coming off of a junior year. And sometimes even in his junior year, maybe he was injured. So how do you pull all that together?
I think there's an avenue that we can get done. I like the calendar that we have this year. With that signing period in Early December. And then get into the portal, because I still think we're protecting the high school player. Which like last year, the high school player was not protected when the signing date was in the middle of December and the portal opened.
And some schools were dropping high school kids because they were taking the portal kid. I think now we're still protecting the high school kid in early December, and then we can get ourselves into the portal. But I think I'm a little bit more hesitant maybe than others to to have a have a signing date in summer when you're not even giving some kids a chance to play their senior year of high school football.
The Presser began with Coach Sarkisian answering a question about the Pros/Cons of Helmet Communication and his plan for utilizing both Helmet communication and Sideline Signals.
Sark: You know, there's a lot of talk right now that the teams that go fast, that really want to go fast, that this is a distinct advantage for them because now you can talk directly to the quarterback. I'm holding out on that opinion, because the other 10 players still need to know what to do, right?
Yes, I can talk to the quarterback, but how do I, how do I get the receivers in alignment and everybody still knowing those plays? Would it minimize some of the signaling on offense, I don't know necessarily that they're going to be able to go faster because they still have to communicate to all those people.
For a team like us, whose very multiple, multiple personnel groupings, formations, motion shifts. Sometimes we go fast, sometimes we huddle, sometimes we're somewhere in between. It does allow us to be a bit more efficient in deciding what tempo we're going to operate in or what personnel grouping we're going to use.
Having spent some time in the NFL and calling plays in the NFL, is that you can really communicate with the quarterback and sometimes just voice inflection from the coach helps the quarterback understand the importance of something in a play. It does allow you to give some subtle tips and reminders and it may not always be for the quarterback. It may be for the running back or the right guard, whoever that is.
But I also think there's a real challenge defensively because just to think that one player on defense has a headset in, you still have to get, like I said, get that call to all 11 players on the field. And if a team's going with tempo, that's going to be difficult to do.
So, I just don't think we can solely rely on the helmet coach the player communication, that that's the end all, be all. We still have to have our mechanisms in place to communicate with all 11 players that are on the field. Whether that's the signals on the field once the player gets that call. That's probably the challenge and it's going to be a little bit of a work in progress because the college game is drastically different than the NFL.
In the NFL, everybody huddles, you know, until two minute and guys start going no-huddle. In college football, there are a lot more no-huddle aspects to what teams do.
So the playcaller, especially defensively is going to have to really be on point. Is this team trying to go fast or not? And I think it's important that the play caller doesn't panic that we show a lot of composure as a coaching staff to get our players the call in a timely fashion. But let's not be too quick to jump to the conclusion that they're necessarily going fast.
And so there's layers to this thing that we are. We worked through in spring ball, but then we're gonna have to continue to work through in training camp and really the first few weeks of the season.
Q(Bohls): You're picked second behind Georgia in the preseason media poll. Does that mean anything to you? Flattering? Do you take confidence in that?
Sark: I always do this exercise with the team and I'll do it again, I'll show the preseason poll, and I'll show the preseason All-SEC team and I'll probably show four or five headlines of articles of how great we're supposed to be. And then I'll probably show another seven or eight articles or headlines or quotes from Coach Saban saying we're not going to run the SEC. Just as a reminder that people's opinions of us before we ever even play a game really don't matter. What we do is what matters.
Do I think we have a pretty good team? Sure, I do.
You know, and I didn't shy away from that at media days, but at the end of the day, it's not about what other people think. It's not about what we say we're going to do. It's about our actions. It's about the way we actually perform and that's going to be our focus. So it just kind of is what it is, you know, I think it's great for college football.
I'll say that I love preseason polls. I love preseason all-conference teams and all-american teams because it gives the college football fan and the pundits stuff to talk about. And it keeps college football at the forefront of what's going on. And like I said, I think our sport is at an all-time high from a popularity standpoint. And part of that is some of this pre-season stuff. Part of it is media days and things of that nature. Where we fall is irrelevant, we have to go play the games, and we have to perform, and we have to work through the adversity that we get faced with, and we gotta rely on depth, and we gotta continue to develop our players as the season goes on. We gotta keep working on our culture and we gotta make sure that we have the right mental intensity, the right mental fortitude week in and week out to perform to the best of our ability.
Bohls: Follow up. Like in 2009 Texas was in the National Championship game and went 5-7 the next year. So you just mentioned the mental side. Is that something you're going to have to stress even more than usual because you're coming off such a great year?
Sark: I think from where we were as a program over the last decade to where we got to last season, I think we still have a really hungry football team. I think we got a taste of what it’s like being in a playoff game tastes like.
I also think the way it ended left a pretty bad taste in our mouths. So I think we've got a very hungry football team that wants to get back. And they've shown me nothing but the right type of work ethic, the right type of mindset throughout the entire off-season, throughout this summer, that I'm not too concerned with complacency.
Q: You lost some special assistants from last year and had some people in support roles move on. Just wondering whether it was Scotty Hazleton or some of those special assistants or Chris Gilbert coming back or Bill Rees coming in. What were you looking for in those specific roles? What led you to hire the guys you hired and the ability now to have more coaches actually coach your practice, how much did that impact who you wanted to add in those support roles?
Sark: You know, when I look at openings, can they make us better than we were? And where are our needs and what type of impact might somebody have in our program?
I'll start with Chris Gilbert. - I hated it when he left. I understood why he left and going to North Texas. I understood all that, but I knew the type of impact that he had in our program. And his relationship with the high school coaches, his relationship with the recruits and their families, his relationships with the current players on our roster.
He has a really good eye for me. Even in practice, I'll bounce things off of him post-practice, post-game. Just kind of the mindset where we're at as a team, so I do lean into Coach Gilbert that way, and it's great having him back, for sure.
Scotty Hazleton, you know, when you assess our season last year, one area where I think we all could agree where we can improve is in pass defense. As I said, pass defense has layers to it. If you want to be a really good pass-defensive team, you've got to have the ability to affect the quarterback, sack the quarterback, and put pressure on the quarterback, make him uncomfortable. If you want to be really good at pass defense, you have to have enough schematic variety, but yet be good at those schemes. And we needed that as a staff.
And then you have to have the players and the personnel that can guard people and make plays on the ball in tight coverage and things of that nature. I've always admired Scotty from a distance. I've known his history, his track record and his connection to Gus Bradley and Monte Kiffin and the Tampa-2 stuff. You know, his connection to get involved in kind of the system that I knew at Alabama of a lot of the combo coverage stuff. So to bring in a guy like that maybe can give us a little bit more variety coverage-wise, that was big.
Bringing Bill Rees on board, Just the expertise that he has, he's been doing it a long, long time.
You know, Coach Saban generally doesn't hire people who aren't good at what they do. And if they aren't good at what they do, they generally don't last but one year and the fact that he was with Coach Saban more than one year. I leaned into Coach Saban a lot when I got his recommendation on Bill. We lost a couple of people, I really felt like we were upgrading at that spot from an evaluation standpoint, not only the high school player evaluation, but potential portal evaluations, but then also evaluating our own roster. And where are we?
He's done it at the highest level of the NFL. He's obviously done it at the highest level of the college game with Notre Dame and Alabama. So I think all three of those guys are going to be impactful for our program.
Q: This summer seems like there's been a lot of emphasis on recruiting. Everyone's fighting to get the official visits, is it important to you to try to wrap things up before the season and then be able to focus on things after the season when the portal opens back up? Are you trying to get that class, I guess, put together before fall camp as much as you can and with decisions that do go different ways throughout the summer. How do you guys attack that once the kids are committed elsewhere? Or is there more finality to that, I guess, in this NIL era, to where you maybe move on and, you know, look elsewhere?
Sark: I've never been the one to panic in recruiting. I think history kind of shows we usually close pretty good as we get into the season, as we get into December, as we get closer to that.
I do believe a lot of times in the summer right now, a lot of recruiting is kind of the hype machine. But you actually have to put the product on the field and you have to play, you have to perform. How do certain players in your program develop? That they sold you on, you're just like him, but actually, how does he play? We believe in our process. We're definitely a relationship-based operation and we don't forego those relationships when a young man commits to another school.
I'm sure just like kids that commit to us, they're not stopping talking to the guys that are committed to us either. At the end of the day, I think we've got a pretty good process and, you know, I always say, I just want to make sure the kids that commit to us are committing us for the right reasons and that they're coming to the University of Texas for the right reasons.
Sometimes those things bear themselves out, you know. Kelvin Banks wasn't committed to us at this time when he decided to come and he's a Preseason All-American. Anthony Hill wasn't committed to us at this time and he's a pretty good player for us. So, over time we continue to build our relationships with the players in our program. And some of them decide to come and some of them don't. But at the end of the day, when we assess our recruiting classes, are we addressing the needs that are on our roster?
Are we building a team that we think can be better next year than it was this year? We're always trying to do those things. And do they fit us? Do they fit us from a character standpoint? Do they fit us from a cultural standpoint? Are they going to be somebody that comes onto our team and enhances our culture, or are they going to be an anchor that we have to keep yanking along?
So, it's not always about the number of stars they have, it's about do they fit what we're about. So again, to go back to my very first statement, I'm generally not one to panic in recruiting, especially in the middle of June and July. Let's talk in December and see where we land.
Q: As the particulars of House v. NCAA continue towards being finalized, or at least go before a judge, Have you been given any indication of what a roster cap might look like, and short of that, do you have an opinion at this point?
Sark: No, we really haven't. You know, I think there’s the powers that be are working themselves through that. And there's a lot of things on the table, what that's going to look like, from roster cap to revenue sharing and how that's going to look in the end, I can look at that down the road.
More important for me is what are we doing this year, I just want to make sure I'm coaching next year when that comes out. So you have to focus on what are we doing this year and how are we maximizing the team that we have this year to put them in the best position to be successful and be the type of team that I think we can have.
Q: It feels like the recruiting calendar keeps moving earlier in the year. I know this year they introduced contacting underclassmen in June. Pushing for summer Signing Day, there's been some talk about that. Just wanted to get your take on that. What do you see as those scenarios? Are they an advantage? What are the pros and cons? What are your personal thoughts?
Sark: Yeah, I think the visits with the Juniors on campus, they're proposing now for January as well as in spring recruiting are positive because so many kids now are taking official visits in the Summer.
And it's hard to identify the personality of a kid if you've never met mom and dad and had a real conversation and a real sit down and had some discussions with them. Because at the end of the day, these kids are committing very early. And how do you know them? Because at the end of the day, we're held to the standard of who they are when we get them, right?
And so if you don't get to know the parents, generally speaking, the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree. And so you gotta get to know the parents, you gotta get to know the young men, you gotta be able to spend time, you gotta be able to have those dialogues with them. So that when you do get them on campus, hopefully, they fit your culture and what you're about.
Quite frankly, I’m a little hesitant about the summer signing period. Because I think you learn a lot about players in their senior year. Our sport, development is so important in 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade. And then when we get them, that development, right, into the NFL. And so, you know, we're sometimes passing judgment on kids coming off of a junior year. And sometimes even in his junior year, maybe he was injured. So how do you pull all that together?
I think there's an avenue that we can get done. I like the calendar that we have this year. With that signing period in Early December. And then get into the portal, because I still think we're protecting the high school player. Which like last year, the high school player was not protected when the signing date was in the middle of December and the portal opened.
And some schools were dropping high school kids because they were taking the portal kid. I think now we're still protecting the high school kid in early December, and then we can get ourselves into the portal. But I think I'm a little bit more hesitant maybe than others to to have a have a signing date in summer when you're not even giving some kids a chance to play their senior year of high school football.
