Saban helped Sarkisian repair his reputation. He hopes to finish time at Alabama with a title
It’s almost an annual ritual at this point. Alabama makes the College Football Playoff ... and one of Nick Saban’s top assistants gets hired for a head-coaching job elsewhere in the midst of the Crimson Tide’s playoff run.
Examples are abundant:
2015: defensive coordinator Kirby Smart to Georgia.
2016: offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin to FAU.
2017: defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt to Tennessee.
2018: offensive coordinator Mike Locksley to Maryland in 2018.
2020? It’s offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian on the move, being named head coach of the Texas Longhorns on Sunday, one day after Alabama’s Rose Bowl victory that secured the Crimson Tide’s fourth appearance in the title game since the playoff format began in 2014.
And while Alabama has gone through rough patches as distractions mount from a top coordinator splitting time between prepping for the present while focusing on the future, Sarkisian said his mind is fully on Alabama as the Crimson Tide prepares for Monday’s title game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium.
“Clearly, I’m excited about the opportunity at Texas,” Sarkisian said Wednesday. “It’s a tremendous one for me. Looking forward to getting started there, but like the commitment I made to Coach Saban two years ago is the same commitment I’ve made to these players, and that’s focusing on this game, giving this game the attention that it deserves so our players have an opportunity to go out and play to the best of their abilities. That’s what we’ve always preached here is to put our players in the best position to be successful on the field and off the field. This week has been no different.”
But Alabama and Saban did more than just set Sarkisian up for his next big gig, similar to the others who have made the jump from Crimson Tide coordinator to head coach elsewhere.
They gave Sarkisian the opportunity to repair his reputation.
Sarkisian, with two decades of coaching experience including seven seasons as a head coach, was fired as head coach at the University of Southern California in October 2015 for erratic behavior and alcohol-related issues. Sarkisian sued USC for breach of contract and discrimination based on disability. He alleged the school fired him instead of allowing him to seek treatment for alcoholism. He lost the $30 million suit.
He joined the Alabama staff in 2016 as an off-field analyst and wound up serving as offensive coordinator for their national title game against Clemson, a 35-31 loss, after Kiffin took the FAU job. Sarkisian then spent two years as the Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator before returning to Alabama.
“It’s a two-way street,” Sarkisian said. “Clearly, Coach Saban offers guys like myself an opportunity to come into his program, learn, develop as coaches, but I think it’s a two-way street in that I think when you come in like a guy like myself, I think you need to come in understanding what your role is. I think you need to come in — I don’t want to call it necessarily humble, but I do think there’s a piece of humility that has to come into this. This is the greatest college football coach of all time, and recognize the space that you’re in, regardless of if you’d been a head coach for seven years, and there’s been a variety of us that have come and gone through here. He’s a tremendous mentor, and if you allow yourself to be mentored, I think you gain even more out of this experience.”
In the past two years at Alabama, he has turned an Alabama team known for its defensive acumen into an offensive juggernaut. The Crimson Tide has averaged 47.7 points per game over the past two years and have scored at least 50 points in nine of 25 games, including six times this season.
Alabama had three offensive players finish among the top five in Heisman Trophy voting, with wide receiver DeVonta Smith winning, quarterback Mac Jones coming in third and running back Najee Harris finishing fifth.
“Sark has done a marvelous job here,” Saban said. “He’s very well organized. He works very well with all the people in the organization, players and coaches alike. He’s a good play-caller on game day. He does a really good job of preparing the players game-plan wise for each and every game, and he’s just done a great job. He’s been a real asset to our organization, and I think he’ll be very successful as a head coach. And he’s taken over a good program, so it’s going to be challenging for anybody that plays them in the future, I think.”
Saban can also relate to the double duty Sarkisian is going through right now. He dealt with the same situation himself two-and-a-half decades ago.
On Dec. 3, 1994, Saban was named the head coach at Michigan State. At the time, he was in his fourth year as defensive coordinator for Bill Belichick’s Cleveland Browns. Cleveland still had four games left on its regular-season schedule and was in the thick of a playoff race. The Browns went 2-2 in those four games to go 11-5 in the regular season and finish second in the AFC Central. Cleveland won its wild-card game against the New England Patriots before dropping its divisional-round contest against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
“You kind of owe it to the players to give your best, to do your best to help them get prepared for the game so they can play well in the game,” Saban said. “That’s how I always felt. I think that’s how Sark feels. Most of the guys in the past have been able to do that and been effective, and it has not been a distraction for us. We’re going to try to help manage it every way that we can so that it’s not a distraction for us this year.”
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