Steve Sarkisian jokingly called out by Nick Saban for “bulls—ing” on College GameDAy

There’s a strong argument that Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and Georgia head coach Kirby Smart are the two current preeminent branches of the Nick Saban coaching tree. Smart’s status is unquestionable. He obviously is the strongest branch with two national championships to his name and recent dominance in the sport. Sarkisian might be behind him, as he has been successful since leaving his post as an Alabama coordinator to be the Longhorns head coach.

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It’s evident both were heavily influenced by Saban. When asked on College GameDay about the ins and outs of playing in a rematch during a conference title game, something Georgia and Texas will do this afternoon at 3 p.m. in the SEC Championship, the two protégés gave direct though cordial answers.

“I think you try to do simple better,” Smart said.

Added Sarkisian, “take in the information then you try to prepare them to go play.”

Saban, now wearing a press pass instead of a whistle, wasn’t having any of it.

“I think they’re both bullsh–ting us,” Saban said.

Here’s more from Sark’s appearance on GameDay.

Sarkisian was asked what the first game did for his team: “I give Kirby a lot of credit. They came ready to play from the jump on that opening kickoff. They were ready to go. We had an opportunity to seize some momentum and didn’t take advantage of it with the turnover. Then, it was short field after short field. We were turning the ball over and they were capitalizing on it. I think getting back to playing sound football is the first part. We’re always better when we’ve got a little bit of balance. We became one-dimensional. He’s got some cats–or some dogs that can combat that. We learned that real quick in that game as well.”

Smart on what makes Sarkisian a great play-caller: “It starts with quarterback play. He has a great mind. He played quarterback, so he understands defenses. He’s coached in the National Football League. He has great experience. He knows how to recruit, he gets good players. When you start looking at his offensive schemes, they’re really, really good at attacking what you do. They have answers for what you do. He has every protection known to man. They get in bunches. They move things. There’s a lot of window dressing that can confuse your kids.”

Sarkisian on Smart’s defense: “There’s a lot of defense. This isn’t like ‘oh, okay, we’re going to get over quarters defense, and away you go.’ It’s a multitude of defenses, a multitude of fronts, and then they take away the things that you do well and they present a picture to the quarterback that can look like one thing, then it changes at the snap and it looks like something else. I think the other side is their ability to collapse the pocket when they know you’re going to throw the football, and they play really sticky coverage in the back end. The pressure packages to go along with the multitude of fronts and defenses to take away what you do well is always really challenging. He’s done it at a really high level for a long, long time.”

Other takeaways for Sarkisian from the first matchup: “What I learned about our guys is the resiliency we have as a football team. We went into the locker room at halftime down 23-0, and that’s not where you want to be. I’m doing an interview with Holly Rowe and she’s thinking ‘what do you need to change.’ I said everything. It’s 23-0 and at half. We’ve got to show some fight here. To come out of the locker room and to cut the lead to 23-15, and we had them 3rd and 10 on their own 11 and Carson (Beck) hits the big in cut, they run the flea flicker and hit the tight end, and they seized momentum back. But I was really proud of our team regrouping at halftime. I think that resiliency has been needed here the last month of the season. Learned a lot about our guys that way because it had been pretty smooth sailing up until that point.”

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On the SEC schedule: “It’s a grind. I’ll say that. I think it’s a grind physically, it’s a grind mentally, and it’s a grind going on the road in some of these hostile environments. In this last month, we played at Arkansas and at A&M, both rival games for us which were very difficult environments to go play in. We were in the Big 12 a year ago, and we had to go to Alabama for one game in the SEC. Your kids can get up and you can pour into that. The challenge here is you’ve got to do it eight straight weeks. You’ve got to do it the next week, and the next week, and the next week. You can get physically beat up and you can get mentally beat up because of the challenge that you have week in and week out. That’s the difference.”

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