‘All gas, no brakes’: Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has the depth of a title contender
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian blows his whistle, calling for the Longhorns to begin “two-spotting” — the simultaneous 11-on-11 drills during spring practice. On one side of the field, his first- and second-string players face each other; on the other, his third- and fourth-string. Everyone practices at once, not just the top players on the depth chart as is often the case.
Entering its fourth season under Sarkisian — and the school’s first in the SEC — Texas is deep enough to lose a school-record 11 players in the first six rounds of last month’s NFL draft and still have enough remaining talent to make a second straight run at the College Football Playoff, according to those within the program. They have arguably the best quarterback room in the country, headlined by starter Quinn Ewers and second-year mega recruit Arch Manning. It wasn’t always this way.
“This is what I always hoped it could be like here,” Sarkisian said, “in that you lose an abundance of really good players to the NFL and then we reload it with players that some might be better than those guys that moved on.”
It took three straight top-five recruiting classes to build and patience from one of the most infamously impatient fan bases. Now, even ahead of an arduous SEC schedule after losing multiple first-round NFL draft picks for the first time since 2007, Texas has a legitimate chance to make a run at a national title — four seasons after an abysmal 5-7 record to start the Sarkisian era.
“We’ve recruited in a way that there’s definitely talent, but I would say we never have sacrificed character for talent, and I think that was definitely a little bit of the secret sauce,” Sarkisian said. “There were a lot of great players, but we wanted to make sure the players we brought into our program, their character matched our culture. You never know why you’re hired until you actually look behind the curtain and you’re like, ‘Ok, what are the issues, what are the warts?’ Some of those warts and issues don’t get exposed until adversity strikes. Quite frankly I felt like culturally, we have to get this right. That was such a big investment we were making in Year 1, but we really made that investment in Year 2 and Year 3.
“Now we’ve got the talent and the culture, and I don’t know if I could’ve said either of those two things quite frankly early on, but now we’ve gotten ourselves to that point.”
3:15
Oklahoma, Texas join the celebration of SEC spring games
The Sooners and Longhorns, who will begin play in the SEC this fall, join Mississippi State, South Carolina and Texas A&M in hitting the field for spring football.
It’s been a measurable climb on and off the field. Not only did the Longhorns finish with a 3-6 record in the Big 12 in 2021, they also didn’t have any players drafted — and they finished with a 2.33 team grade point average, according to Sarkisian. In his second season, Texas finished 8-5 with a 2.78 team GPA and five players drafted.
Last year, Texas finished 12-2 with a 2.98 GPA and the aforementioned 11 drafted players. Its resounding 34-24 win at Alabama in Week 2 made an early statement in the CFP race, and ultimately — along with the school’s first Big 12 title since 2009 — that win earned Texas the No. 3 seed and a trip to a CFP semifinal, where it fell six points shy of No. 2 Washington.
Sixth-year linebacker David Gbenda said the win in Tuscaloosa gave the Longhorns the confidence to win at a higher level.
“We managed to go toe-to-toe with a great team,” said Gbenda, who had six tackles (three solo) and a sack for a 10-yard loss at Alabama.
After the season, Sarkisian was rewarded with a four-year contract extension that takes him through 2030 — a rare sign of commitment in Austin. Not since Mack Brown (1998-2013) has a coach lasted more than four seasons at Texas, as Charlie Strong was fired after two and Tom Herman was fired after four.
Gbenda said it wasn’t exactly a “smooth transition,” but now they understand what it takes.
“It was a culture shock when he came in, because he did things a lot differently,” Gbenda said. “‘All gas, no brakes’ is not something he just says — he means that in everything we do. … Year 3 is the year we finally had the right pieces and the right guys.”
If Texas is going to build on last season’s success, beating the likes of Alabama is only the beginning. This year the Longhorns will host Georgia on Oct. 19 in what will be one of the most consequential games of the season. They also have November trips to Arkansas and Texas A&M — plus the annual rivalry against OU — and travel to defending national champion Michigan in Week 2. Texas is the only team in the country that will play the past three national champions this season, as it faces both Georgia (2021, 2022) and Michigan (2023).
The Longhorns return four of five starting offensive linemen, a unit the coaching staff emphasized building since its first recruiting class. Texas has also been meticulous about its use of the transfer portal, luring in speed and experience at wide receiver and depth at defensive tackle, where Texas needed it most. And of course, there’s that quarterback room.
What the Longhorns lost is nothing to scoff at, as they have to replace their top five receivers in both receptions and yards, and the returners accounted for just 16% of the receiving yards last year. That position, though, might be the best example of how Texas has combined its high school recruiting, the transfer portal and player development to establish a room capable of saying farewell to first-round NFL draft pick Xavier Worthy and second-round pick Adonai Mitchell without flinching.
Alabama transfer receiver Isaiah Bond was considered by many the top receiver in the transfer portal, and he joins Oregon State transfer receiver Silas Bolden and Houston transfer Matthew Golden as members of 2024 Texas. Last season, Bond and Bolden led their respective teams in receiving yards. They’re all talented enough to start, but they’re in good company with players like Johntay Cook II and DeAndre Moore, who have been waiting in the wings — and true freshman phenom Ryan Wingo, who is capable of earning a starting role.
According to ESPN’s Bill Connelly, Texas ranks No. 38 in the country in overall returning production (67%) and seventh in SEC. The other CFP semifinals from last season rank 101st (Alabama), 128th (Washington) and 131st (Michigan).
According to Connelly, the Longhorns have stocked their returning production drastically since Sarkisian’s first season when they were 120th in the country. In 2022, that jumped to 62nd in the FBS. Last season, they were 15th in returning production, including No. 3 in the country on offense (85%).
That type of depth is what allowed Texas to run its “two-spotting” drill this spring, and have a true spring game with substitutions.
“I can have one field with 22 guys a snap, working,” Sarkisian said. “Well, that means I’ve got 100 guys watching. Or I can have two fields and now I have 44 guys working. Dramatic difference. And then when they go watch the tape, they’re watching themselves, not somebody else.
“We’ve always been trying to do it, and every team tries, but a lot of times that second field doesn’t have enough linemen or things. We’ve done a good job of balancing our roster at multiple positions to where we can do that. We’ve probably done it more in spring practice than we ever have at anywhere I’ve really been.”
Not that the new faces don’t have something to prove.
Gone is Byron Murphy II, the Big 12’s defensive lineman of the year, along with defensive tackle T’Vondre Sweat, the league’s 2023 defensive player of the year, and linebacker Jaylan Ford. That means an opportunity for linebacker Anthony Hill Jr., who was named the Big 12’s co-defensive freshman of the year. His five sacks were the most by a Texas freshman since 2000.
Texas finished with the No. 5 recruiting class in the country for 2024, luring in 14 ESPN 300 commits. Sarkisian’s 2023 class was No. 3 in the country, inking Manning, who is still the biggest quarterback name on a collegiate roster. In 2022, Sarkisian’s first full recruiting class as head coach, he had the No. 5 class and added Ewers into the class after he transferred from Ohio State. That was also the class four-star offensive tackle Kelvin Banks, who committed to Texas on the heels of the five-win season.
The two recruiting classes before those three ranked No. 15 and No. 9 by ESPN.
Banks said a big reason he bought into Sarkisian’s philosophy was because former offensive lineman Christian Jones was proof of player development. Jones was recently drafted by the Arizona Cardinals in the fifth round.
“He had a down year and the next year he went crazy, absolutely crazy,” Banks said. “He had a great year, was high in the rankings as an offensive tackle. Just seeing that and him as well telling me and giving me all the information, everything that was going on, it made me feel like, if he’s doing it, why can’t I do it, too? … Listening, doing it and seeing it working all helped me along the way buy into the process.”
Discipline has been part of that process, the players said, agreeing that Sarkisian is a stickler for uniformity. Tuck the shirt in, take the earrings out, wear the same socks. Get to class on time. Clean up the locker room, close the locker doors, don’t leave tape lying around.
“How are you going to do the big things when it’s quarter four, it’s a long drive and you’re expected to be relied upon and you can’t even pick up your tape?” Gbenda said. “That’s the standard we try to build here, the standard of excellence on and off the field. Sark is really big on that. He doesn’t like playing with jerks or people he can’t rely on. Trust is a big thing in this program.”
Texas hasn’t been without incident, as Sweat, the Outland Trophy winner, was booked into jail after an arrest for driving while intoxicated. Linebacker S’Maje Burrell has since been identified as the driver of the vehicle that hit the SUV Sweat was driving. Police said Sweat was driving a Ford Bronco when he was hit from behind, causing him to lose control, veer off onto a service road and roll the car onto its side. When police responded at 4:41 a.m., the other driver, later identified as Burrell, had left the scene.
On April 10, Sarkisian released a statement saying the school had suspended Burrell from all team activities due to “conduct detrimental to the program.” Burrell has since entered the transfer portal.
Gbenda said anyone who doesn’t follow the rules gets called out by the leaders on the team or position coaches, and some form of individual punishment is done “off to the side.” If a player doesn’t get the message and is a repeat offender, the whole position group gets punished, Gbenda said.
“After a point in time,” he said, “if you’re not getting the message, everybody around you will understand the message.”
The Longhorns are still searching for their first national title since 2005 — the ultimate proof that Texas is indeed “back.” The CFP will unveil a 12-team format this fall that guarantees the five highest-ranked conference champions a spot in the playoff — making that October home game against Georgia significant to the CFP seeding, as the top four seeds will earn a first-round bye. Banks said the “Texas back” talk infiltrates the locker room, but they try not to get consumed by what people outside the program think.
“As a team we’re very focused,” Banks said. “We’re thriving. It was a little taste last year. We want to reach that national stage. We want to show everybody, ‘Hey, we’re not just going to say we’re back and be here and not show it on the field.’ We want to show people what we’re talking about, that’s what we’re building here.”
JIM ABBOTT IS sitting at his kitchen table, with his old friend Tim Mead. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, they were partners in an extraordinary exercise — and now, for the first time in decades, they are looking at a stack of letters and photographs from that period of their lives.
The letters are mostly handwritten, by children, from all over the United States and Canada, and beyond.
“Dear Mr. Abbott …”
“I have one hand too. … I don’t know any one with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy.”
“I am a seventh grader with a leg that is turned inwards. How do you feel about your arm? I would also like to know how you handle your problem? I would like to know, if you don’t mind, what have you been called?”
“I can’t use my right hand and most of my right side is paralyzed. … I want to become a doctor and seeing you makes me think I can be what I want to be.”
For 40 years, Mead worked in communications for the California Angels, eventually becoming vice president of media relations. His position in this department became a job like no other after the Angels drafted Abbott out of the University of Michigan in 1988.
There was a deluge of media requests. Reporters from around the world descended on Anaheim, most hoping to get one-on-one time with the young left-handed pitcher with the scorching fastball. Every Abbott start was a major event — “like the World Series,” Angels scout Bob Fontaine Jr. remembers. Abbott, with his impressive amateur résumé (he won the James E. Sullivan Award for the nation’s best amateur athlete in 1997 and an Olympic gold medal in 1988) and his boyish good looks, had star power.
That spring, he had become only the 16th player to go straight from the draft to the majors without appearing in a single minor league game. And then there was the factor that made him unique. His limb difference, although no one called it that back then. Abbott was born without a right hand, yet had developed into one of the most promising pitchers of his generation. He would go on to play in the majors for ten years, including a stint in the mid ’90s with the Yankees highlighted by a no-hitter in 1993.
Abbott, and Mead, too, knew the media would swarm. That was no surprise. There had been swarms in college, and at the Olympics, wherever and whenever Abbott pitched. Who could resist such an inspirational story? But what they hadn’t anticipated were the letters.
The steady stream of letters. Thousands of letters. So many from kids who, like Abbott, were different. Letters from their parents and grandparents. The kids hoping to connect with someone who reminded them of themselves, the first celebrity they knew of who could understand and appreciate what it was like to be them, someone who had experienced the bullying and the feelings of otherness. The parents and grandparents searching for hope and direction.
“I know you don’t consider yourself limited in what you can do … but you are still an inspiration to my wife and I as parents. Your success helps us when talking to Andy at those times when he’s a little frustrated. I’m able to point to you and assure him there’s no limit to what he can accomplish.”
In his six seasons with the Angels, Abbott was assisted by Mead in the process of organizing his responses to the letters, mailing them, and arranging face-to-face meetings with the families who had written to him. There were scores of such meetings. It was practically a full-time job for both of them.
“Thinking back on these meetings with families — and that’s the way I’d put it, it’s families, not just kids — there was every challenge imaginable,” Abbott, now 57, says. “Some accidents. Some birth defects. Some mental challenges that aren’t always visible to people when you first come across somebody. … They saw something in playing baseball with one hand that related to their own experience. I think the families coming to the ballparks were looking for hopefulness. I think they were looking for what it had been that my parents had told me, what it had been that my coaches had told me. … [With the kids] it was an interaction. It was catch. It was smiling. It was an autograph. It was a picture. With the parents, it ran deeper. With the parents, it was what had your parents said to you? What coaches made a difference? What can we expect? Most of all, I think, what can we expect?”
“It wasn’t asking for autographs,” Mead says of all those letters. “They weren’t asking for pictures. They were asking for his time. He and I had to have a conversation because this was going to be unique. You know, you could set up another player to come down and sign 15 autographs for this group or whatever. But it was people, parents, that had kids, maybe babies, just newborn babies, almost looking for an assurance that this is going to turn out all right, you know. ‘What did your parents do? How did your parents handle this?'”
One of the letters Abbott received came from an 8-year-old girl in Windsor, Ontario.
She wrote, “Dear Jim, My name is Tracey Holgate. I am age 8. I have one hand too. My grandpa gave me a picture of you today. I saw you on TV. I don’t know anyone with one hand. How do you feel about having one hand? Sometimes I feel sad and sometimes I feel okay about it. Most of the time I feel happy. I hope to see you play in Detroit and maybe meet you. Could you please send me a picture of you in uniform? Could you write back please? Here is a picture of me. Love, Tracey.”
Holgate’s letter is one of those that has remained preserved in a folder — and now Abbott is reading it again, at his kitchen table, half a lifetime after receiving it. Time has not diminished the power of the letter, and Abbott is wiping away tears.
Today, Holgate is 44 and goes by her married name, Dupuis. She is married with four children of her own. She is a teacher. When she thinks about the meaning of Jim Abbott in her life, it is about much more than the letter he wrote back to her. Or the autographed picture he sent her. It was Abbott, all those years ago, who made it possible for Tracey to dream.
“There was such a camaraderie there,” she says, “an ability to connect with somebody so far away doing something totally different than my 8-year-old self was doing, but he really allowed me to just feel that connection, to feel that I’m not alone, there’s other people that have differences and have overcome them and been successful and we all have our own crosses, we all have our own things that we’re carrying and it’s important to continue to focus on the gifts that we have, the beauty of it.
“I think sometimes differences, disabilities, all those things can be a gift in a package we would never have wanted, because they allow us to be people that have an empathetic heart, an understanding heart, and to see the pain in the people around us.”
Now, years after Abbott’s career ended, he continues to inspire.
Among those he influenced, there are professional athletes, such as Shaquem Griffin, who in 2018 became the first NFL player with one hand. Griffin, now 29, played three seasons at linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks.
Growing up in Florida, he would watch videos of Abbott pitching and fielding, over and over, on YouTube.
“The only person I really looked up to was Jim Abbott at the time,” Griffin says, “which is crazy, because I didn’t know anybody else to look up to. I didn’t know anybody else who was kind of like me. And it’s funny, because when I was really little, I used to be like, ‘Why me? Why this happen to me?’ And I used to be in my room thinking about that. And I used to think to myself, ‘I wonder if Jim Abbott had that same thought.'”
Carson Pickett was born on Sept. 15, 1993 — 11 days after Abbott’s no-hitter. Missing most of her left arm below the elbow, she became, in 2022, the first player with a limb difference to appear for the U.S. women’s national soccer team.
She, too, says that Abbott made things that others told her were impossible seem attainable.
“I knew I wanted to be a professional soccer player,” says Pickett, who is currently playing for the NWSL’s Orlando Pride. “To be able to see him compete at the highest level it gave me hope, and I think that that kind of helped me throughout my journey. … I think ‘pioneer’ would be the best word for him.”
Longtime professional MMA fighter Nick Newell is 39, old enough to have seen Abbott pitch for the Yankees. In fact, when Newell was a child he met Abbott twice, first at a fan event at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan and then on a game day at Yankee Stadium. Newell was one of those kids with a limb difference — like Griffin and Pickett, due to amniotic band syndrome — who idolized Abbott.
“And I didn’t really understand the gravity of what he was doing,” Newell says now, “but for me, I saw someone out there on TV that looked like I did. And I was the only other person I knew that had one hand. And I saw this guy out here playing baseball and it was good to see somebody that looked like me, and I saw him in front of the world.
“He was out there like me and he was just living his life and I think that I owe a lot of my attitude and the success that I have to Jim just going out there and being the example of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Who’s to say you can’t be a professional athlete?’ He’s out there throwing no-hitters against the best baseball players in the world. So, as I got older, ‘Why can’t I wrestle? Why can’t I fight? Why can’t I do this?’ And then it wasn’t until the internet that I heard people tell me I can’t do these things. But by then I had already been doing those things.”
Griffin.
Pickett.
Newell.
Just three of the countless kids who were inspired by Jim Abbott.
When asked if it ever felt like too much, being a role model and a hero, all the letters and face-to-face meetings, Abbott says no — but it wasn’t always easy.
“I had incredible people who helped me send the letters,” he says. “I got a lot more credit sometimes than I deserved for these interactions, to be honest with you. And that happened on every team, particularly with my friend Tim Mead. There was a nice balance to it. There really was. There was a heaviness to it. There’s no denying. There were times I didn’t want to go [to the meetings]. I didn’t want to walk out there. I didn’t want to separate from my teammates. I didn’t want to get up from the card game. I didn’t want to put my book down. I liked where I was at. I was in my environment. I was where I always wanted to be. In a big league clubhouse surrounded by big league teammates. In a big league stadium. And those reminders of being different, I slowly came to realize were never going to go away.”
But being different was the thing that made Abbott more than merely a baseball star. For many people, he has been more than a role model, more than an idol. He is the embodiment of hope and belonging.
“I think more people need to realize and understand the gift of a difference,” Dupuis says. “I think we have to just not box everybody in and allow everybody’s innate light to shine, and for whatever reasons we’ve been created to be here, [let] that light shine in a way that it touches everybody else. Because I think that’s what Jim did. He allowed his light to permeate and that light, in turn, lit all these little children’s lights all over the world, so you have this boom of brightness that’s happening and that’s uncontrollable, that’s beautiful.”
NEW YORK — Chicago Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong is projected to receive the largest amount from this season’s $50 million pre-arbitration bonus pool based on his regular-season statistics.
Crow-Armstrong is on track to get $1,091,102, according to WAR calculations through July 8 that Major League Baseball sent to teams, players and agents in a memo Friday that was obtained by The Associated Press.
He earned $342,128 from the pool in 2024.
“I was aware of it after last year, but I have no clue of the numbers,” he said Friday. “I haven’t looked at it one time.”
Pittsburgh pitcher Paul Skenes is second at $961,256, followed by Washington outfielder James Wood ($863,835), Arizona outfielder Corbin Carroll ($798,397), Houston pitcher Hunter Brown ($786,838), Philadelphia pitcher Cristopher Sánchez ($764,854), Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz ($717,479), Boston catcher Carlos Narváez ($703,007), Red Sox outfielder Ceddanne Rafaela ($685,366) and Detroit outfielder Riley Greene ($665,470).
Crow-Armstrong, Skenes, Wood, Carroll, Brown, De La Cruz and Greene have been picked for Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
A total of 100 players will receive the payments, established as part of the 2022 collective bargaining agreement and aimed to get more money to players without sufficient service time for salary arbitration eligibility. The cutoff for 2025 was 2 years, 132 days of major league service.
Players who signed as foreign professionals are excluded.
Most young players have salaries just above this year’s major league minimum of $760,000. Crow-Armstrong has a $771,000 salary this year, Skenes $875,000, Wood $764,400 and Brown $807,400.
Carroll is in the third season of a $111 million, eight-year contract.
As part of the labor agreement, a management-union committee was established that determined the WAR formula used to allocate the bonuses after awards. (A player may receive only one award bonus per year, the highest one he is eligible for.) The agreement calls for an interim report to be distributed the week before the All-Star Game.
Distribution for awards was $9.85 million last year, down from $11.25 million in 2022 and $9.25 million in 2023.
A player earns $2.5 million for winning an MVP or Cy Young award, $1.75 million for finishing second, $1.5 million for third, $1 million for fourth or fifth or for making the All-MLB first team. A player can get $750,000 for winning Rookie of the Year, $500,000 for second or for making the All-MLB second team, $350,000 for third in the rookie race, $250,000 for fourth or $150,000 for fifth.
Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. topped last year’s pre-arbitration bonus pool at $3,077,595, and Skenes was second at $2,152,057 despite not making his big league debut until May 11. Baltimore shortstop Gunnar Henderson was third at $2,007,178.
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