Steve Sarkisian has turned his Texas football program into a real culture club | Golden
NEW ORLEANS — Steve Sarkisian’s football culture transformation at the University of Texas didn't happen overnight.
It has come over time.
With the Washington Huskies — Texas' opponent in Monday night's Sugar Bowl, the second of two College Football Playoff national semifinals — standing between his team and next week's national championship game, Sarkisian has the Longhorns' program on a historic path as it heads to the Southeastern Conference.
One spectacular season doesn't make a career, but the UT football coach's current construction project has the look of long-term success. Not only does changing a program's culture happen over time, but when it's done the correct way, it permeates a locker room while quietly reinforcing life lessons.
That starts with the head coach.
The week before Texas' regular-season finale against Texas Tech, Sarkisian addressed team culture, something he's brought up more times than one can count over the past three years.
Similar success has happened at his previous stops as an assistant coach, but this is the first time in his 10 years as a head coach that Sarkisian has experienced a season like this. And it isn’t all about what’s happening on the field.
A change in culture has sparked the Texas revolution
Now, for those who have waited 14 long years for Texas to be playing in a game of Monday night's significance, you won’t mind humoring the head coach, who provided a comprehensive explanation before the Longhorns blasted the Red Raiders on Nov. 25 and then Oklahoma State in the Big 12 championship game Dec. 2 to earn their first CFP appearance.
“It manifests itself with the relationships that you build,” Sarkisian explained. “I think that there are things that we talk to in our culture that are of the utmost importance. Commitment is really important to our culture. Discipline is really important to our culture. Accountability is very important to our culture. Mental and physical toughness are very important to our culture. Love is very important to our culture. Vulnerability is very important to our culture. Transparency is really important to our culture."
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So is getting the buy-in not just from players, which Sarkisian has, but also from the fans and the alumni, including former players. Sarkisian won over former UT linebacker Derrick Johnson immediately, and Johnson in turn has become a fixture at practices and a mentor to the Texas linebackers. Sarkisian smartly retained another Texas legend — 2005 Thorpe Award winner Michael Huff — from former coach Tom Herman's staff, and UT legends Vince Young and Colt McCoy have been in the ear of starting quarterback Quinn Ewers for the past two years.
Sarkisian “has that special connection with the guys, and they want to play for him,” Johnson said.
“He’s been building this culture for three years now, and it’s showing up.”
A player to build around: Jordan Whittington
From Sarkisian's first practice in the spring of 2021, he recognized that Jordan Whittington could serve as the best example of what he was trying to build here. Problem was, Whittington was thinking about quitting after battling through some injury-plagued seasons. But he had decided to return in 2021 with a new focus.
Sarkisian had become a fan of Whittington's work ethic and that spring named him the starting slot receiver, and since then he has established himself as one of the team's most selfless players. But a broken collarbone suffered in the 2021 Red River Rivalry game against Oklahoma had Whittington thinking again about giving up football. He still loved the game, but at what cost? He had already missed 17 of a possible 23 games over his first two years.
Whittington told his mother and Sarkisian that football might be over for him. But Sarkisian, seeing his potential, got on the line with Whittington's mom, and they helped persuade the receiver to come back one more time.
“I wouldn’t let him not play football anymore,” Sarkisian recalled. “I just know you only get this one time. You don’t get to say when I’m 40 or 50, like me, ‘I’m going to go back and play football. That was a pretty good deal. I should have done that more.’ Now’s the time. You need to maximize that.”
Whittington returned for the 2021 finale, and over his final two seasons he has caught 88 passes for 1,085 yards and two touchdowns on a team that's not short of pass catchers. But for all those receptions, the play that has illustrated his total buy-in on Sarkisian's culture build came on a Texas turnover in November at TCU.
A deep throw from Ewers found the arms of a TCU defensive back, who intercepted the pass at the Horned Frogs' 24-yard line and raced back upfield. Whittington took off in hot pursuit, chased him down and knocked the ball out some 40 yards later. Fellow receiver Xavier Worthy, also making the length-of-the-field chase, recovered it.
Whittington — the oldest player on UT's roster — had made the hustle play of the season in a 29-26 win without which the Longhorns wouldn't have made it to the CFP.
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But also, when the final story of the 2023 season is written, that play deserves its own chapter because it embodied everything Sarkisian is building in Austin. Texas didn't play its best that day, but it figured out a way to win. Who knows where the Longhorns would be now without that play?
At a Dec. 20 practice, Sarkisian addressed the team and gave some sage advice.
“Your résumé is your tape,’” he told his players. “What you put on film every Saturday is your résumé. We should all aspire to be like him.”
The "him" Sarkisian was referring to was sitting to his right — Whittington, whose big play in Fort Worth came one month after Texas had blown a late lead and lost 34-30 in the final seconds to the Sooners. A week later, the Longhorns were tied 21-21 with heavy underdog Houston before overcoming several mistakes for a seven-point win.
"Was this a culture win?" I asked Sarkisian after that game.
"Yes, it was," he said. "For sure it was."
And two weeks after that, a win over Kansas State at Royal-Memorial Stadium wouldn't have happened without a decisive goal-line stand in overtime, ending at Texas' 4-yard line.
How a 2021 bus ride changed everything
No empire was ever built without loss, though. No real blues singer ever wrote a song without some personal emotional turmoil attached. For the Horns, the evening of Nov. 6, 2021, will go down as the start of the culture change in Austin.
Texas led 7-3 at halftime in Ames, Iowa, but the Iowa State Cyclones came out and trampled the Horns with 21 unanswered points in the third quarter en route to a humbling 30-7 win. The Longhorns had been outplayed.
On the team bus ride to the airport, UT defensive line coach Bo Davis heard chuckles. His gut ached from a fourth straight loss, and hearing how some players were taking the losing streak got him boiling somewhere well north of 212 degrees. He stood up and let loose in an expletive-filled, character-challenging rant at the players.
Neither he nor Sarkisian knew it at the time, but Davis' speech had been recorded by a player and was leaked to viral results.
That first Sarkisian team posted Texas' first six-game losing streak in more than 60 years, and several players entered the transfer portal in the weeks that followed. But the Longhorns who remain from that 2021 team will never forget the Bus Ride From Hell.
Texas has gone 20-6 over the past two seasons, including a pair of wins over Iowa State, a blowout win over Oklahoma last year, and this year a program-changing victory in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and the Big 12 title game blowout of Oklahoma State. Sarkisian said after this year's 26-16 win in Ames that he has told athletic director Chris Del Conte more than once that a statue of Davis should be erected somewhere on campus. He also admitted to being glad that the 2021 video was leaked because it helped change the trajectory of his program.
“I think it meant a lot to a lot of the players in that locker room because from the sounds of it, that might have been going on and the fact that we were able to put a stop to that and change the direction and the trajectory of our program, it doesn’t happen overnight,” Sarkisian said. “That was just the starting point, and then we had to continue to build off of that for years to get to this point.”
Rebuilding the team's culture, one step at a time
In the two seasons after Davis' rant, prominent locker room leaders such as Bijan Robinson, Roschon Jonson and Jaylan Ford emerged. Others followed. A coach-led program has now become player-led. Little things such as selflessly picking up trash after a team meeting or movie outing have become part of a culture that’s not only working on the field, but in the classroom. The team just produced a 2.9 grade-point average, Sarkisian announced last week.
Even when UT was losing, Sarkisian was working on the psyche of the locker room. Culture Wednesdays in the offseason became a staple. Players would participate in various team-building exercises aimed at bringing them closer to one another.
“It’s about how they’re doing,” defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski said. “It’s how their family is doing. The relationships away from football. It all matters. It’s been about building that trust and connection over the last few years.”
The buy-in has been spectacular, and the player development has made the program one of the best feel-good stories of the 2023 season, from defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat going from a rotational player up front to winning the Outland Trophy as the nation's top interior lineman, to safety Michael Taaffe, who turned down scholarship offers coming out of Westlake High School to walk on at Texas, eventually earning a scholarship and becoming a dependable performer in the secondary.
And don’t forget right tackle Christian Jones, who went from the Longhorns' scout team early in his career to two solid seasons that have made him a legitimate NFL prospect. Returning for his senior year turned out to be the decision of a lifetime for the mild-mannered locker room favorite.
“Coach Sark took me to a place I never thought I could get to,” Jones said. “I can really wholeheartedly say this university has changed my life, and it will continue to change my life. And it was the main reason why I decided to come back.”
One final play that spoke volumes
With Texas, there were no quick fixes. The program is a product of growing pains, hard lessons and a coal miner's work ethic.
“Battle wounds,” said Ford, an All-American linebacker. “Battle scars. Trauma forms bonds, man.”
When running back Jonathon Brooks was lost in November to a season-ending knee injury against TCU, it also ended what was looking like an all-conference year for him. Sarkisian and Whittington were there to give him words of encouragement.
Brooks will have better days, but he'll never forget the last snap of his 2023 season — and it wasn’t the one that shredded his knee in Fort Worth on Nov. 11, but the final play of the Big 12 championship game Dec. 2.
Sarkisian had Brooks dress in his uniform for the game, knowing that if it was well in hand, he'd trot Brooks out there for the final kneel-down.
“We wouldn’t be in this position without Jonathon Brooks,” Sarkisian said.
Long after his football career is over, the guess is that Brooks will never forget the day his head coach asked him to dress even though he knew the running back couldn't physically help win the game. He'll remember the feeling of being part of a tight-knit locker room. He'll remember being on the field for the last snap of a conference championship game. He'll remember a team that was aligned with its head coach and had bought in to what Sarkisian was building at Texas.
A football culture.
Monday's CFP semifinals
Rose Bowl — No. 1 Michigan (13-0) vs. No. 4 Alabama (12-1), 4 p.m., ESPN; Sugar Bowl — No. 2 Washington (13-0) vs. No. 3 Texas (12-1), 7:45 p.m., ESPN, 1300, 98.1, 105.3 (Spanish)
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football has experienced a culture change under Steve Sarkisian
