Fair enough. Here's one: 2025-26 College Football Playoff Teams (12-Team Format) #1 Indiana Hoosiers (Big Ten) #2 Ohio State Buckeyes (Big Ten) #3 Georgia Bulldogs (SEC) #4 Texas Tech Red Raiders (Big 12) #5 Oregon Ducks (Big Ten) #6 Ole Miss Rebels (SEC) #7 Texas A&M Aggies (SEC) #8 Oklahoma Sooners (SEC) #9 Alabama Crimson Tide (SEC) #10 Miami Hurricanes (ACC) #11 Tulane Green Wave (AAC) #12 James Madison Dukes (Sun Belt) Here's another: Richest College Athletic Programs (2025 Valuation) University of Texas ($1.48B): Leads in revenue, driven by $137 million in donations and a massive NIL budget of $35M-$40M for 2025. Ohio State University ($1.35B): Consistently among the top, with high revenue from football and large athletic department valuation. Texas A&M University ($1.32B): A top SEC program with significant valuation. University of Georgia ($1.16B): Boosted by recent national championship success and growing revenue. University of Michigan ($1.16B): A perennial top-five program in revenue and valuation. University of Notre Dame ($1.13B): Strong independent, consistently high-valued, and revenue-generating.
You can continue to support Sark all you want, and I will continue to share the myriad of reasons why he's not good enough. I'm actually not a hater. No one on this site has spent more time with the players, than I have and over the last four years, I have learned that they are amazing people. They deserve the best. So do the fans who are asked to contribute so much.
Yes, the Beard situation is unique for us, because he was a clearly a great coach, and he screwed it up. He doesn't belong in a list of mediocrity alongside Terry, Smart, Strong and Herman who all sucked beyond all comprehension. Sark is better than those losers. But I don't see him winning a championship for Texas, and since that should be always the goal.
They have been able to produce winners in football and basketball that greatly exceed anything we have done over the last 16 years. Perhaps they have better organization and cohesion on the highest levels that allows them to choose and support great coaches. Between Strong, Herman, Smart and Beard, we have been a mess, and that's being charitable. Currently, I would argue that it's a better job than UT.
Oregon is an incredible job. Yet writers said, 'pay Dan Lanning whatever it takes' to make him take the Michigan job. Nobody wrote that about Sark. So is Alabama, which is arguably a better job than Texas. Yet Kalen Deboer had to make a public statement to get people to back off. Sark didn't have to make a statement because, well, there was no attempt to get him. My point is that Sark never gets in any lists for hottest coach. None. I think Sark is, at best, a mid-level coach who will produce mid-level results. Yet some of you seem perfectly fine with that.
This is 100 % exactly my point. His name never comes up. Perhaps he would be more successful as a coordinator in the NFL, where he would't be responsible for getting his team focused, since he seems to kinda suck at that.
He beat Ohio State, which Sark can't seem to do. Maybe, just maybe, in this new era where money is king, Texas should never be sitting on the sidelines. And yes, I do admit that I am not one of his biggest fans these days. His recent press conference utterances told me everything I need to know about him. And now he's whining about NIL. Poor baby! It's so unfair that you have to do your job as well as ten other coaches seem to be able to do! I don't think University of Texas athletics should ever tolerate mediocrity, but especially in the modern era where we have all the advantages.
Just asking the question. Sark got paid a lot of money, Texas is the largest money-generating program, and has one of, if not the largest player payrolls in college football, but we couldn't make a 12-team playoff. Could it be possible that Sark isn't the best coach that Texas could get?
If it's a joke, it sure isn't much of one. The list of the hottest coaches today and coaches actually approached for jobs like Michigan and Penn State somehow didn't include genius and master strategist/motivator Steve Sarkesian. Louisville’s Jeff Brohm Oregon's Dan Lanning Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham (locked up with new contract) Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz Washington’s Jedd Fisch Alabama's Kalen Deboer Indiana's Curt Cignetti (locked up with new contract) Hell, even His Royal Whaleness, the Duke of Elko, appeared on wish lists for Michigan. Apparently, not everyone in college football shares the opinion that Sarkesian is an ace-in-the-hole, cracker jack coach.
Another proof point in my treatise on Sark: with the myriad of coaching changes this season, we heard a lot of “pay Kalen Deboer or Dan Lanning whatever they ask” for the Michigan job. The top ten names all got thrown around for Penn State, Michigan and other choice jobs. But somehow, despite all his brilliance, Steve Sarkesian’s name never came up. Wonder what is up with that? I thought he was one of the most brilliant offensive minds in the game and a QB whisperer. Could it be that our $9.95’s are…wrong?
Nothing says college like the StaffDNA Cure Bowl in Orlando, Florida. You don't get misty college memories when the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl drops? The SRS Distribution Las Vegas Bowl doesn't conjure up an autumn campus, cute girls in sweaters and keg parties? I love the collegiate pride and history associated with this year's Xbox Bowl in venerable college town, Frisco, Texas. I always walk the campus with my wife and daughters before the Bush's Boca Raton Bowl of Beans. Didn't Michigan beat the University of Chicago in the first-ever bowl game, the Myrtle Beach Bowl Presented by Engine?
Then someone should tell Sark about it so he can try it. You're right. We shouldn't raise our expectations. We should just stay the current path and be happy with a pretty good team, cause that is looking like our ceiling with Sark.
No, we are not getting Cignetti, but that is not the point. Cignetti proved that to win today, you don't have to be a blue-blood. You have to be able to replace mediocre players through the portal, actually get the most out of your top athletes (who knew?), develop your players and field a well-prepared, focused and motivated team. I have no confidence that our current coach can accomplish that.
Those are fair points, and Sark has been a major improvement over the mostly dog-shit coaching we've had since 2011. However, we can fairly compare Cignetti to the first two years of Mack Brown, Charlie Strong, Tom Herman and Steve Sarkesian. FYI, Indiana's 'absolutely dog-shit schedule' this season includes wins over Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State on the road.