Texas’ Steve Sarkisian calls out ‘absolutely false and untrue’ coaching rumors

The 2025 football season has not gone according to plan for the University of Texas. Steve Sarkisian’s Longhorns began the year as the preseason No. 1 team in the country, but fell to No. 17 after getting blown out by Georgia on Saturday. Now 7-3 on the season, the Longhorns have been all but eliminated from College Football Playoff contention. 

Amid those struggles, rumors have emerged about Sarkisian’s future at Texas. There was a report he had interest in making a jump to the NFL after the Tennessee Titans job opened up and ESPN’s Desmond Howard recently hinted at the possibility of a “mutual parting of ways” between Sarkisian and Texas.

But on Wednesday’s SEC coaches teleconference, Sarkisian felt compelled to shoot down those rumors, beginning his portion of the call with a statement about his commitment to Texas. 

“I’d like to comment on something before I get into our team, something that has been bothering me now over the past few weeks, and that is people reporting or insinuating that there’s a possibility I could leave the University of Texas, and that is absolutely false and untrue,” Sarkisian said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Sarkisian noted he hadn’t addressed rumors previously because he didn’t want to be a distraction, but felt that at this point he needed to shut them down. 

“I’ve had no discussions, not with my agent, not with the university, not with any other school, not with any NFL team, about ever going anywhere else,” Sarkisian added. “I came here to win championships. I’ve got two kids enrolled at the University of Texas, one in law school, one on our team. I’ve got a third that hopefully decides to enroll at the University of Texas next fall. And my wife and I just had our son here in Austin. This is our home. We came here to win championships. 

“We’ve built a damn good football program over the five years that we’ve been here. We’ve been to two College Football Playoffs. We won a Big 12 championship. We went to the SEC championship game in year one. We’ve had 23 players drafted the last two years, which is more than any other school in the country. And our team GPA is at an all-time high. So can we please stop putting things out there that you have absolutely zero evidence on, and then can we please stop retweeting, putting it back out there, as if it’s true, as if it’s the gospel? It is not true.”

Given the activity we’ve seen on the coaching carousel this year already, seemingly every coach in the country is facing questions about his job status — whether that’s being on the hot seat or looking toward greener pastures. 

There aren’t many programs that come with the resources Texas has, but the NFL is a siren song few college coaches can ignore and Sarkisian already spent time coaching in the pros. Whether an NFL team would be interested in Sarkisian is a different question, but there was enough believability to those reports, especially amid a tough season in Austin, that they started to make the rounds. 

Sarkisian hopes his statement on Wednesday puts a halt to those rumblings, and asked for the focus to shift back to the Texas football team. Texas will face Arkansas this week before hosting No. 3 Texas A&M in a highly anticipated showdown with an Aggies squad that is the SEC’s top team this year. If that game against A&M doesn’t go the way of the Longhorns, Sarkisian probably won’t love the questions that come his way about the product on the field either.