Texas coach Steve Sarkisian's huge salary bump comes at a risk, right Aggies? | Golden
Steve Sarkisian got the bag.
And good for him.
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I can’t blame the University of Texas for making him the third-highest paid coach in college football, but fans should not misplace his salary for automatic inclusion in future championship circles. Texas, which should make his raise to $10.3 million official when the UT Board of Regents approves it this week, is obviously shooting its shot but surely recognizes that his deal comes with a degree of financial risk.
The sport’s landscape has become one of coaches cashing lottery tickets disguised as contracts drawn up by sugar agents before they have fully earned these exorbitant salaries. Sarkisian has turned Longhorns football around and is the beneficiary of a marketplace that prioritizes potential over production.
And what a contract it is.
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Sark’s salary gets bumped up from what would have been $5.8 million in 2024 to $10.3 million through 2030 with annual $100,000 increases kicking in. And thank God for that one-time payment of $300,000 that will hit his CashApp sometime before April Fool’s Day. Before I read that part, I was worried the Sarks might not be able to meet the household bills over these next few weeks.
Steve Sarkisian: college football's Next Big Thing?
Texas goes all in: It’s possible Sarkisian is the newest rock star in the profession after coming through a wilderness in his personal life. One can’t help but admire what he has built over at Bellmont. Plus, he's motivated to do more.
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“I’m borderline obsessed with winning a championship,” he said a few weeks ago.
That’s not a flame in his coaching belly. It’s an inferno.
About that contract, though. It’s the entertainment business and Sarkisian’s paycheck is right up there with coaching icons Kirby Smart of Georgia and Dabo Swinney of Clemson though the two highest-paid coaches in the country have combined for four national championships to Sark's none.
The past season would suggest that Sarkisian is a coach on the rise and athletic director Chris Del Conte and UT System Board and Regents chairman Kevin Eltife are throwing their chips into the middle of the table. They’re all-in, and then some.
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The bosses are choosing to reward long-term potential over production and that’s the name of the game these days. They’re wagering that Sarkisian is the next great Texas coach, ending a decade-plus run of mediocrity. The 20-7 record over the last two seasons is great compared to the 5-7 debut, but Texas’ new SEC home base will turn up the heat, not only on the schedule but in the expectations department.
Sarkisian just piloted the team to a 12-2 season, a Big 12 championship and a College Football Playoff semifinal. So the upside is obvious.
Let's see what he can do.
Look to the Aggies, Texas, look to the Aggies
Fisher fallout: Now some of you are wondering if there is a point to all of this. Isn’t it obvious? One needs only to take a glance down to College Station to see what can happen when contract extensions go south.
Many Texas fans chuckled after Jimbo Fisher flopped at Texas A&M. Yes, the same Fisher whose $10-year, $75 million contract was reworked to $95 million after the Aggies went 9-1 in the 2020 season that was shortened by the pandemic. Fisher didn’t deliver and the Aggies were left holding a $75 million guaranteed bag, deliverable to Jimbo in several not-so-easy installments.
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The question has to be if Sarkisian is capable of returning this program to the great days of yesteryear, back when Mack Brown was stringing together 10-win seasons with startling consistency. Capable? Sure, and that’s what the check signers are banking on.
It’s risky, but worth it.
NBA All-Star game hit the skids
Not so fan-tastic: I tuned in to watch the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday night and the 2010 NFL Pro Bowl broke out.
The league’s midseason showcase in Indianapolis ended in a riveting 211-186 score. That’s lots of offense in a game that was pretty offensive.
It has become unwatchable because none of the millionaires participating are interested in competing. It’s an exhibition of open-court dunks and wide-open three-pointers and maybe that’s what the public wants, but my decision to binge the latest season of "True Detective" was ultimately the smartest move.
Here’s what I miss about the All-Star game. Back in the day when Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and Magic Johnson — and later Kobe Bryant — were the stars, you could best believe there was some pride being showed in most games. Sure, you got the alley-oops, the no-look passes and the showmanship, but when the midway point of the fourth quarter rolled around, both teams hunkered down and actually tried to get stops to win the game.
“Fans want to see the best pickup game in the world,” a retired Bryant said on the Knuckleheads podcast in 2019, months before his death. “They want to see when the best players of the planet go head-to-head against each other. Guys play harder at a pickup game in UCLA.”
Testament to the lack of effort is the fact that only nine fouls have been whistled in the last two all-star games. That includes a whopping two on Sunday.
This generation of players are more interested in not getting hurt than they are in giving the fans a real game and the spectators may be fine with that, but there’s such a thing as competition and we saw little of that in the cradle of basketball.
What's the answer? Maybe a winner-take-all with the victors earning $1 million each, paid for by the many sponsors the league has rounded up over the years. That may do the trick, but it's hard to create desire among players who are mostly worth over $100 million.
Let’s give thanks for WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu and the great Stephen Curry who saved the weekend. Their 3-point duel was one for the ages. Ionescu requested no handicaps and matched the total of the finalists in the men’s long-distance shootout. “Shooters shoot,” she said.
Ball is ball and she gained a fan here.
The end of championship parades?
Where have we gone wrong?: Two juveniles were arrested in connection with the mass shooting at the Super Bowl celebration parade last week that left one dead and dozens of others injured, many of them children ages 15 and younger. May they grow old in prison.
What has happened to America? We can’t even celebrate the Super Bowl winner peacefully?
Who the hell gets strapped up to go to a parade? Who knows how many would have died if not for some heroic citizens who detained the accused gunmen? I don’t care what side of the political aisle you sit on, but this has to stop. It’s a never-ending cycle of violence. By one station’s count, our country had 48 mass shootings in the first 47 days of 2024. While we recycle well wishes and prayers for a bottomless supply of victims, nothing has changed.
Our city leaders will have to think twice moving forward in making fans of championship teams a bunch of sitting ducks while people with little to no regard for human life continue to terrorize our population.
Own as many guns as you want. It’s your constitutional right, but don’t try and convince me it’s fine that a teenager can go online and obtain a killing machine before he can rent a car or drink a beer legally.
Hell, a 17-year-old kid shot another teen in a high school parking lot less than 10 minutes from my front door three weeks ago then ran him over with his car, dragging him several feet. He was arrested later and found to be in possession of a stolen firearm.
Soon after, he was back on the streets after attempting murder instead of in a jail cell. Zero deterrents.
This is real life as we know it, not some video game. How many people have to die before our leaders finally say enough is enough?
The Old West has nothing on present-day America.
We’re supposed to be better than this.
We’re not.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian's big raise comes with a risk
