Steve Sarkisian on the evolution of recruiting and impact of helmet communication

Texas Longhorns head football coach Steve Sarkisian was asked if recruiting is more "national" now instead of being specific to the state you coach in along with the impact of helmet communication that begins this season. Hear his answers in Hour 2 of Monday's program.

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
We're back. It's the Craigway Showwith Hall of Fame broadcaster and voice of
the Texas Longheards Craig Way. AMonday afternoon here on Sports Radio AM thirteen

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under the zone over staying dry whereveryou are. It doesn't look like it's
raining much here by the lake anymore, but it did. Text with the
missus during the break she said itwas raining up in Georgetown a while ago.
So up north if you're up thatway, maybe getting a few showers
and around the area as well.And it's nice keeping the temperatures down to

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keeping it nice and cool. Youknow. Just one more baseball note before
we move back into football. We'retalking about the Astros turning their seasonal round
and now tied for first place inthe American LYU West. As he takes
a simple water, there we go. They got a pretty big series this

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weekend. The Dodgers come to Houston, so and we know what La and
Houston it's all about with regard tobaseball. So it's a pretty big series
coming up this weekend at Minute MayPark Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Alright,
we move back to football, andas I mentioned, the Texas High

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School Coaches Association's annual Coaching School isunderway. For those of you who are
wondering what exactly is that deal,it's Park Convention, It's Park Clinic,
it's Park Convocation. It's a bigthing because you're talking about in the neighborhood

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of they think they may have bythe time their registration ends today, I
guess the second day Tomorrow's the lastday of the coaching school and convention.
Sixteen thousand coaches there in San Antonio. By the way, if you're driving
downtown, good luck. Good luck. If you're trying to get into one

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of the many restaurants around, goodluck. But it's in the convention center
this weekend and now into the startof this week and it is this combination
of lectures and also the exhibits.If you go in the exhibit hall,

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they're in the convention Center. It'spretty fascinating stuff to walk in there and
to see all the different displays andthe models and the products and services that
are available. You walk in thereand just and look to your left and
you'll see a big display from ascoreboard company. It's what they do,

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so they're marketing, you know,to the high school coaches and athletic departments
that might be in the hunt fora new scoreboard, and they're kind of,
you know, appealing to them,and you know, like I said,
sports drinks and coaching aids of differentsorts, video technology things, you

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know, a lot of that.But then but they're mainly there for the
lectures and there's a lot of lecturesthere from a lot of coaches. Logrn's
head coach, Tieve Sarkisian and hisstaff did a chalk talk yesterday after we
had our Division one panel discussion withall thirteen Division one FBS coaches there and

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it was good to good to meeta couple of the guys. Mike Elco,
the new head coach of Texas Aand m I had some questions that
were specifically uh specifically designed for thethree new head coaching and these questions,
by the way, came from thefrom the Coaches Association reaching out to their

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membership body, and so there wasa lot of questions about early signing day,
roster sizes, coaching staff things,a lot of the things that we
talk about every year. But Ialso had questions for the three new head
coaches in the state. Knew attheir positions, Mike Elcho at Texas A
and m also Willie Fritz at Houstongoing over from Tulane, and Scottie Wolden,

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the new head coach at UTEP sothey were there, and then of
course you had you had all ofthe other coaches. You had GJ.
Kinney from Texas State up on theDAS as well. You had, like
I said, sark you had JoyMcGuire from Texas Tech, Dave Randa from
Baylor, Sunny Dykes from TCU,Rhet Lashly from SMU, Eric Morris from

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North Texas, Jeff Trailer from UTSAwho is always incredibly hilarious and that kind
of always lean on him to kindof close it out a little bit like
he does every year. Casey Keelerfrom sam Houston was there. Every Division
one FBS coach in the state ofTexas was up on that day, so

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it was a lot of fun yesterday. And then prior to that, long
Worn's head coach, Steve Sarkisian hada news conference and as I mentioned last
hour, he addressed some topics andsome questions that did not come up during
SEC media day. So there's alot of things that were not just repeat
to what happened in Dallas last week. For example, here was a question

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about recruiting being more on a nationalbasis now and in other words, especially
for major programs like Axis, recruitingoutside the state of Texas. That's a
sensitive topic when you've got in theneighborhood of nine hundred coaches sitting in that
room yesterday in the big ballroom listeningto this about recruiting outside the state of

(06:13):
Texas as well as within the borders. But it was one of the questions
that coach Sark was asked about inhis news conference prior to that discussion.
I think there's a lot of layersto it, you know, I think
social media access to more players formore schools. You know, historically,
back in the day, you hadto go to the school to get to

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know the coach, to get toknow the kid. You know that it
was much more difficult when they hadto just call the house the home phone
to try to try to get thekid. Now, you know the reach
that schools have to get the youngmen, whether it's through text messages,
direct messages, on social media,different things. Ability to see their film.
Film can can get shared through Twitteror any other format like that,

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So I think the reach is alittle bit better for the schools. I
think seven on seven has played apart in that. I think kids now
are much more apt to go travel, to play in different seven on seven
tournaments around the country, and sotravel isn't so foreign to young people.
I mean, back in the day, maybe a kid would take a visit
was his first time ever getting onan airplane. And now I think they're

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just more apt to go travel.And you know, I think conference realignment
to some degree has something to dowith that. That players are moving around,
and I think nil has something todo with that. You know,
at the end of the day,all those things adding up. I'm not
saying one is more important than theother, but I think a lot of
those things adding up to players arejust more apt to travel and to go

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to different schools. That doesn't meanthat we're not trying to keep them here.
We're trying like crazy and myself andall the other schools in the state
of Texas, and the majority ofour team is from the state of Texas.
But you know, at the ourjob is to field the best football
team at the University of Texas,and so sometimes you know, a player
or two in state may decide togo out of state and we have an

(08:09):
opportunity to recruit a really good playerfrom another state. We have an obligation
to the University of Texas to tryto do that, to try to feel
the best team. What I loveto have every player from here and get
every of the best players from thestate of Texas, of course, but
that's just not the reality right now. Maybe it'll get back to that.
I don't know, we'll see,but you know that doesn't mean we don't

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try, and we try really hard, but we also have a responsibility to
field the best football team that wecan. One of the new nuances of
the coming twenty twenty four college footballseason will be the implementation of helmet communication
between coaching staffs and quarterbacks on offenseand a linebacker on defense or one player
a designator on defense as well.And I think it was our friend Mike

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Craven of Dave Campbell's Texas Football Magazinewho asks sark about helmet communication and will
it be that much different now?On how will things be similar or dissimilar
with helmet communication? Well, Ithink some of that varies to the style

(09:15):
of offense. You know. Youknow, there's a lot of talk right
now that the teams that go fast, that really want to go fast,
that this is a distinct advantage forthem because now you can talk directly to
the quarterback. And I'm holding outon that opinion because the other ten players

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still need to know what to doright and so, yes, I can
talk to the quarterback, but howdo I get the receivers in alignment and
everybody still knowing those plays? Andso would it minimize some of the signaling?
Maybe on offense, but I don'tknow necessarily they're going to be able
to go faster because they still haveto communicate to all those people. I
do think it is, you know, and for a team like us who's

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very multiple, multiple personnel groupings,formations, motion shifts, sometimes we go
fast, sometimes we huddle sometimes wheresomewhere in between. It does allow us
to be a little bit more efficientto decide what temple that we're going to
operate in or what personnel grouping thatwe're going to. Why I like it,

(10:22):
you know, having spent some timein the NFL and calling plays in
the NFL, is that you canreally communicate with a quarterback and sometimes just
voice inflection from the coach helps thequarterback understand the importance of something in a
play. It does allow you togive some subtle tips and reminders, and
it maybe not always be for thequarterback, it may be for the running

(10:43):
back or the right guard, whoeverthat is. But I also think there's
a real challenge defensively because to thinkthat one player on defense has a headset
in you still have to get,like I said, get that call to
all a level than players on thefield, and if a team's going with
tempo, that's going to be difficultto do. So I just don't think

(11:05):
we can slowly rely on the helmetto you know, coach the player communication
that that's the end all be all. We still have to have our mechanisms
in place to communicate with with alleleven players that are on the field,
whether that's signaling, whether it's thesignals on field once the player gets that
call. But that's that's probably thechallenge, and it's going to be a

(11:26):
little bit of a work in progressbecause the college game is drastically different than
the NFL. The NFL, everybodyhuddles, you know, and until two
minutes and guys start going to huddle. In college football, there's a lot
more no huddle aspects to to whatteams do. And so the play caller
is especially defensively, is going tohave to really be on point. Are

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is the team trying to go fastor not? And I think it's important
that the play caller doesn't panic.That we show a lot of composure as
a coaching staff to get our playersto call in a timely fashion. But
let's not be too quick to jumpto a conclusion that they're necessarily going fast.
And so there's layers to this thingthat that we are we worked through

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in springball, but that we're goingto have to continue to work through in
training camp and really the first fewweeks of the season. There's some more
from Sark that we're going to getto coming up here in just a few
moments because and this is how youcan tell that this has taken place since
SEC Media Days, because the questionsare about the follow up, which was

(12:31):
the SEC announcing the media poll.By the way, camp, did you
did you cast your ballot? Idid not. You didn't feel like I
was informed enough about linebackers and defensiveends to vote in the Preseason Bowl.
I got you, Okay, welllet's go. I saw some people voted
for South Carolina in Vanderbilt to winthe SEC and I don't want to be
like those guys. Yeah, thatwas silly. That, That was silly

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I was. I was pulling outmy national publications and doing some other stuff
to make sure I got my ballotin just in time, and I did
on all of that. We're gonnatalk a little bit about that and we'll
have some more so we'll have somesarks reaction to that being asked about that.
We'll do that when we continue onSports Radio AM thirteen under the Zone
in the iHeart Radio app.