Steve Sarkisian: ‘Everyone Needs To Hearth Their Coach. Who You Gonna Rent?’

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian didn’t mince words when asked about his thoughts on the recent tsunami of firings happening in college football.

“Everybody wants to fire their coach,” he said. “Who you gonna hire? There’s all these jobs out there right now. Who’s everybody gonna hire? I don’t know. We’ll find out. Somebody’s gotta be the head coach. 

“The amount of ‘one week you’re a hero, the next week you’re a zero’ mentality that fan bases and people want to have — surely coaches want some security to what they signed up to go do.”

Most recently, Auburn fired head coach Hugh Freeze on Sunday — the eighth Power 4 coach to be fired this season. He’s owed $15.8 million, bringing the total buyout for the 11 FBS coaches fired this season to $182 million.

The other head coaches fired this season include Brian Kelly (LSU), James Franklin (Penn State), Billy Napier (Florida), Mike Gundy (Oklahoma State), Sam Pittman (Arkansas), Jay Norvell (Colorado State), Trent Bray (Oregon State), DeShaun Foster (UCLA), Brent Pry (Virginia Tech) and former Super Bowl winner Trent Dilfer (UAB).

“We work really hard, and I get it,” Sarkisian continued. “We all want to win, and we’re all busting our tails to try to win and sometimes things don’t go your way — especially in our conference. It’s tough, so the idea that coaches don’t want some security in the jobs that they take, that doesn’t quite make sense to me. … 

“Somewhere in here, somebody has got to be willing to say, ‘Hey, let’s see if this can work itself out.’ … Not all 16 teams in the SEC are gonna go to the (College Football) Playoff. It’s just not reality.”

Sarkisian, 51, has been at the helm in Austin, Texas since 2021. Sarkisian boasts a 38-19 record with Texas, going 5-7 in 2021, 8-5 in 2022, 12-2 in 2023 and 13-3 in 2024. This season, the Longhorns are 7-2 heading into a Week 11 bye. They lost to then-No. 3 Ohio State in their season opener before a shocking loss to unranked Florida in Week 5. Sarkisian has led Texas to two consecutive College Football Playoff appearances and is aiming for a third this season.

Prior to joining the Longhorns, he had head coaching stints at Washington (2009-13) and USC (2014-15). He spent one year at Alabama (2016) as an offensive assistant coach and interim offensive coordinator before heading to the NFL, where he spent one year as the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons (2017-18). He then returned to the college ranks, spending the following year as Alabama’s OC/QBs coach (2019-2020) before being hired by Texas.

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