How Sark has manifested a good team culture at Texas

You hear it every year: Culture. What does it mean? Well, let Steve Sarkisian tell you.

Episode Transcript

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He's a Texas legend, a Hallof Fame broadcaster, the voice of the
Texas Longhorns, and your host ofthe Craigway Show. Here he is now
Craig Way. The biggest news outof today came from Norman, Oklahoma,

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where OU has extended Brent Fennables theirhead coach till two thousand and twenty nine,
a six year deal. In extension. He's going to earn upwards of
seven million dollars per year and we'llkeep him in Norman at least until twenty
and twenty nine. Oklahoma coming offa ten win season in Fennables' second season

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as a head coach for Oklahoma andnow we're train transitioning into the SEC and
are locking down their coach. ButAndrew, it seems like you are very
surprised by this move. I'm surprisedby the move and that it didn't need
to happen on June twenty first.I just don't understand why they wanted to
make this move outside of just stealingsome headlines. Maybe that's kind of the

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move. Right as Texas has anSEC celebration coming up, maybe you say
like, hey, you know,we are celebrating too, we have our
coach, but I just don't believeit. Cam. I just don't I
need Venerable to come into the SECand make a splash. I'm not asking
for ten wins if I'm a Soonerfan, I'm asking for a bull berth
at this point because I'm very mucham worried. I think Texas comes into

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the SEC and is fine. Ithink Oklahoma might go the way of Nebraska
going into the Big Ten when theydid, because they are a nationally recognized
program going into a much better conference. And we've seen how that story's played
out before. We've seen a coupleof Texas coaches get extended. We saw
Sarkisian get extended after a re inthe College Football Playoff. We also saw

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Tom Herman get extended after winning theSugar Bowl against Georgia. And then,
of course let go not that longafter. Right now, Andrew putting on
the spot, what do you thinkwill happen to Brent Finnables a Sarkesian like
run or a Tom Herman like runthat will end in him being fired by
Oklahoma? What do you see happening? What is more likely to happen at

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this point, I can argue thatHerman had more success than this short amount
of time. Cav I don't know. I best case scenario for Oklahoma is
it Venerable was the genius behind thescenes. He was the guy that was
building all these Clemson great players andgetting the absolute most out of them.
That's best case. Worst case isthat, Okay, you get a defensive

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head coach going to a league that'snow offensive driven. If you put me
on the spot, I'm gonna say, I don't think he finishes the contract.
Oh okay, I know Texas fanswill love to hear that. What
else Texas fans like to hear?Well? Steve Sarkisian talking about the growth
of the team's culture. For awhile, we heard culture, culture,

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culture, whether it's Charlie Strong,Tom Herman, or Sark And now it
seems like culture has a new meetingunder Steve Starkesian coming off a college football
Playoff appearance, the first one inprogram history, and the Longhorns are on
a very trending direction heading into theSEC. So sark talk with Joe Klatt
this week on the Big New Conversationand Clatt, who does work for Fox,

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does a lot of color games orcolor analyst games with Gus Johnson.
He was there for the Texas thrillingvictory over Kansas State in overtime right the
fourth and goal stop on Will Howardled by to Fandre Sweat and Byron Murphy
and Colton Vasek. An incredible endingto a game where I could not fill
my legs by the end of him. But Clatt, of course, you

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know, he comes and he doeshis TV stuff and he'll sit down with
the coaches and players, and hesat down with Texas running back Jonathan Brooks,
and he said he had never hearda player talk about culture like Jonathan
Brooks because of how vulnerable he was. And we talked about how Sark was
vulnerable during during his conversation about beingsober and dealing with alcoholism and all of

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that, and Class said, men, I've never heard a player talk about
that. And so his follow upquestion to Sark was, how is he
manifested building this culture year after year? You know, I was I was
chuckle. When I go into differentbuildings, you know, you try to
do some professional development. I seea sign that says culture thinking. You

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know what I always think when Isee this because I see him too,
What culture like define it for me? Culture? What does that mean?
There's a lot of different cultures,for sure. I've stepped into buildings and
teams and seen teams and played onteams where the culture was terrible. So
it's like you can put up signof culture, it's like we got a
culture of turds. Because to me, culture is organic. It's not something

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that you out in a team meeting. I think it naturally occurs. Right,
every family dynamic has its own culture, right, and I think that
starts at the top. Right,how are your parents? You know,
how are you raised? You know? What is really what is leadership?
Right nowadays? I get a chuckle. I was reading something but a good
friend of mine, John Gordon,he put out this morning was about leadership

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isn't what you put on social media. It's how you live every day.
And so what is the example thatwe give to the culture that we want
as coaches, that the players nowcan look to to say, Hey,
that is something I want to emulate. That is somebody I want to be
like. That is somebody I wantto shape my life towards. And then

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ultimately what happens, Like I wastelling the group last year at the end
of the year. Not only didthey buy into our idea of the culture,
I felt like the leaders on thatteam last year elevated it. We
went to another space that I didn'tknow a college football team could go to.
Now where did that show up?I think cultures show up against Kansas
State? Yeah, tough. Forewe're controlling the whole game. We turn

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the ball over. Next thing,you know, you go to overtime and
case State's got four plays inside thefive yard line and every one of those
plays somebody different made the play.It wasn't you know, Tomandre Sweat did
make four straight plays. You know, Ryan Watson made a play, John
Ay Baron makes a play, JalenFord makes a play, Baron Sirell makes

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a play. And So this ideato me of culture and when you're vulnerable
and you do really get to knowthe guy next to you, now you
get that sense of accountability. Sure. Now it's like my brothers are counting
on me, and you know what, I can count on that guy.
I know what he's about. He'sgoing to be where he's supposed to be.
I think that's a great example.I think the third long play against

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TCU another game that kind of gotsideways for a second. We had to
make a play a d Mitchell,who was new to our program. Quinn
trusted him to go make that playon that go on go ball fourth and
one against Houston in the fourth quarter, you know, recognizing the route combination
and John A. Barron, youknow, weaving his way through it on

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the sprint out and getting that ballknocked down on fourth down. So there's
a bunch of those things. There'sthere's a play against Iowa State last year
where Jonathan Brooks had hurt his kneethe week before we went to Iowa State,
Cedric Baxter became kind of the bellcow and it was late, it
was tiring, it was it wasa physical game, and it was fourth
down and Jaden Blue stepped in thehuddle and we needed to get this fourth

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down to solidify the game. Hesaid, Coach, let me get the
ball, and C J. Baxterand the line say yeah, Blues got
it, and Jordan Winnings and saysBlue, just get behind me and we
hand the ball to Jade, andBlue, who was our third argument fourteen
tailback at that time, goes andfinds a hard yard to get a first
down, and so to me,those all those little kinds of things.

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I think that's why you make thoseplays in games, because guys count on
one another because they had an up, continue to get vulnerable, get to
know one another. That's interesting.Yeah. John Gordon is really good.
Love all of his stuff. Andone of the other things that I would
he comes every year. By theway, well you do a speaker here,
I mean, bring a lot ofguys multiple times to me. That

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Culture Wednesday, I know, howdoes that manifest? So we do what's
called Culture Wednesday every Wednesday all summerlong. So we do our workouts Monday,
Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Wednesdaysare about us as individuals, right
mind, body, soul, recovery, things of that nature. We start
every day with Culture Wednesday and wepick a topic I always share. For

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some days we do gratitude trees orwhat are we really grateful for? Man,
Like, everybody wants what else canI get? Everybody's looking at their
phone about somebody else, what they'redoing, what vacation they're on, what
car they're driving, what shoes they'rewearing. But what about some of the
things that I have that I'm reallygrateful for? Right? And so we
kind of do that. We doa lot of exercises like that, and

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then we'll bring in speakers. AndJohn Gordon's great because the premise of everything
that he talks about is about love, right. And yes, there's some
great things which we just you know, I was just talking about there,
about leadership and things, but everythingcomes back to love, right, and
this idea about loving one another,being a teammate of love, leading through

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love, serving through love. That'sthat's what you're trying to create, right,
Because when you have love, thenyou have compassion, then you have
empathy, and then you feel forsomebody else and then you'll do anything for
them to try to help them getthrough whatever they're going through. And so
John is fantastic. He comes inevery year and speaks to the guys.
Culture of tourds is what Joe Clydesaid, culture of chords. I don't.

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I don't think anyone has any bannersof that in their locker room,
right, Andrew, No, No, I don't. I don't think anybody
has that. But you know what, Joel Clad gave me a really good
T shirt idea really good T shirtidea. As we go into the sec
especially for your rivals, because TexasA your biggest rivals. But UTSA,
uh yeah, yeah, Okay,so there you go. UTSA has a
culture of turns. You can writethat you not, not me. I

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like. I like UTSA none myself. Don't put it on me. I'm
just saying giving you ideas, uhfor your rivals. Okay. Uh.
We'll have more audio from Sark andhis convo with Joe Clapp, but up
next, we're gonna visit with c. J. Folgo from on Texas Football.
Get you guys your recruiting scoop aswe continue this fire me up Friday
here on Sports Radio