Texas HC Steve Sarkisian: NIL Money Is Making CFB More & More Like the NFL

Five minutes into the conversation, Rich made a point of noting that the words Arch Manning had not yet come up. Steve Sarkisian smiled and corrected the record.

"I try to beat you to the punch," the Texas head coach said. "That's why I threw him in there in like the first or second sentence. Just throw the name in there, because I know we're going to circle back to it at some point."

They did. And what Sarkisian said about his quarterback was less about arm talent than about what happens to a young player when the people who built him up decide he owes them something.

"Anytime you have that name on the back of your jersey, that carries so much weight," Sarkisian said. "They're the first family of football."

He walked through the inheritance. Archie and the career he had. Peyton and Eli and the gold jacket and the Super Bowl wins. Cooper. And now this kid, carrying all of it.

"The expectations were just outlandish. So many people built him up to be the greatest of all time, the first pick of the draft, the Heisman Trophy winner, that when we weren't very good at the start of the year as a team, and he wasn't at his best at the start of the year, it was almost like those same people that built him up wanted to tear him down."

Why? Because he had let them down, Sarkisian said, after they had gone on air and said all those things about him.

Sarkisian called it the first real adversity Manning had ever faced. He also thinks it is the most valuable thing that has happened to him.

"99% of the people in his shoes at his age going through what he went through last year, I think could have destroyed him, could have melted him. And he didn't. I think he got stronger."

The line that will travel is the one about what Manning learned to ignore.

"I really don't think he cares about what somebody says about him. Some being good, some being bad," Sarkisian said. There are still people who think he goes first overall. There are people who think he wins the Heisman. There are plenty who think neither. "That's okay, too. I just don't think it moves the needle for him."

What actually shifted the season, in Sarkisian's telling, was the locker room. Teammates found out how tough Manning was, mentally and physically, and that became its own motivator. Sarkisian says the team has a different feel now, credited it to a lot of people, and then refused to pretend.

"I would be remiss if I didn't say that part of why this team feels different is because of Arch Manning."

The rest of the interview was a coach doing state of the union on a sport that will not sit still. Sarkisian took the Texas job in January of 2021 and rattled off what has changed since: the transfer portal, NIL, revenue sharing and publicity rights, conference realignment, playoff expansion from four to twelve with talk of sixteen and twenty-four, and now chatter about a super league.

Asked directly whether college football is headed toward a 40 to 60 team mini-NFL with relegation underneath it, Sarkisian did not dodge.

"I would definitely not disagree. The trajectory is telling us that that's kind of where we're headed."

Then he explained his own posture with a line he got from working three years for Nick Saban.

"Adapt or die. And there's a reason dinosaurs aren't on the earth anymore."

Sarkisian caught grief at SEC media days for saying part of the quiet part out loud, and he said it again here without flinching. Texas went 10 and 3 last season, beat Michigan in the Citrus Bowl, and missed the playoff after back-to-back semifinal appearances that both ended with the ball inside the 10-yard line.

Ten and three does not feel good enough. So he made hard calls.

"Coming off of last year's team, I had to let probably five or six really good players leave because of the amount of money that other schools were offering them, to ultimately clear cap space so that I could then go sign other transfers where I felt like we could upgrade our roster."

He knows how that sounds. "People are like, how could he say that out loud? Well, I'm saying it out loud because that's the reality of where we're at in college football. And to think that we're the only school doing that, I think people have their head in the sand."

On playoff expansion, Sarkisian's answer was more careful than the internet wants it to be. At twelve, resting starters is not a real concern, because teams are still chasing conference championships and first-round byes. At sixteen or twenty-four, he thinks it becomes a live possibility, the same way NFL teams sit Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes in week 17 once the seeding is locked.

That is why he credits Greg Sankey for pumping the brakes.

"Let's make sure we're looking at all of the unintended consequences of expansion," Sarkisian said. What it means for fan bases showing up to a home game against a rival where starters sit. What it means to lose conference championship games. What it does to media rights.

"We're not the NFL, at least not yet."

For now his focus is smaller. His players got four days off and report back Tuesday, which he calls the longest day of the year. Wednesday they hit the grass.

"I've got 111 guys downstairs below me in that locker room that I owe my undivided attention to."

Rich closed by asking Sarkisian to pass along a message to his quarterback, since Manning apparently does not care what anybody says. Archie once made Rich an unofficial Manning at a Super Bowl, a designation Rich concedes may have been alcohol infused.

"Let him know that," Rich said.

Sarkisian, gracious to the end, offered a small amendment.

"I think he respects you. Definitely a level of respect, not care."