Texas Longhorns head football coach Steve Sarkisian will be participating in the Cotton Bowl on Friday, as his team will aim to beat the Ohio State Buckeyes in the semifinals of the College Football Playoff for a spot in the CFP National Championship on Jan. 20.
This won’t be Sarkisian’s first time playing a central role in the Cotton Bowl.
As the BYU Cougars’ starting quarterback on New Year’s Day in 1997, Sarkisian capped an incredible season by leading the fifth-ranked Cougars to a dramatic 19-15 comeback victory over the 14th-ranked Kansas State Wildcats.
The game
The Cougars entered the contest with a 13-1 record, their only loss coming in the third week of the season to the Washington Huskies. The Wildcats, meanwhile, were 9-2, their only losses coming against top 10 teams — Nebraska and Colorado.
BYU had one of the nation’s best offenses (Sarkisian led the country in passing), while Kansas State countered with one of the nation’s best defenses.
The game also featured two elite head coaches, LaVell Edwards for BYU and Bill Snyder for Kansas State, both of whom are now the winningest head coaches of all time at those respective schools.
With the matchup getting aired on CBS, it started out as a defensive slugfest, with BYU leading 5-0 at the end of the first quarter thanks to a safety and a field goal.
The Wildcats broke through for a 41-yard touchdown at the end of the second quarter on a Hail Mary pass from Brian Kavanagh to Andre Anderson that was tipped around in the end zone before Anderson grabbed it, and Mike Lawrence converted a 2-point try to give Kansas State an 8-5 lead at halftime.
The Wildcats went up 15-5 in the third quarter on a 72-yard pass from Kavanagh to Kevin Lockett after the Cougars missed a tackle on Lockett, and BYU was in a significant hole given how its offensive hadn’t produced.
But with less than 11 minutes to play, Sarkisian connected with James Dye for a 32-yard touchdown, and BYU moved to within 3 points of Kansas State at 15-12.
Then with the game entering its final minutes, Sarkisian linked up with a wide open K.O. Kealauhi for a 28-yard score to give the Cougars the lead at 19-15 with 3:39 to play.
On the Wildcats’ final drive, they got all the way down to the 12-yard line with less than a minute to play, but Omarr Morgan jumped a route and intercepted a Kavanagh pass as BYU escaped with the victory to finish the season 14-1.
Sarkisian finished the day — his final collegiate game — having completed 21 of 36 passes for 291 yards with the two late touchdowns against one interception.
Steve Sarkisian’s coaching career
Following his BYU career, Sarkisian played three seasons in the Canadian Football League, where he was rather mediocre for the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
He then immediately turned to coaching, becoming the quarterbacks coach at El Camino College in 2000, where he had played football and baseball out of high school before going to BYU.
After one season, Sarkisian took a big jump, becoming the quarterbacks coach at USC under offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who had been an assistant under Edwards at BYU from 1973-1999.
Sarkisian then moved to the NFL in 2004, becoming the quarterbacks coach of the Oakland (now Las Vegas) Raiders. He stayed there for one season before going back to USC.
In December 2008, Sarkisian was named head coach at Washington, a position he held for five years until being named head coach at USC.
Following a tumultuous period, Sarkisian was on the staff at Alabama during the 2016 season and then returned to the NFL as offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons for two seasons before getting fired.
He returned to Alabama as offensive coordinator for two seasons before being hired to his current role as head coach at Texas in January of 2021.
Sarkisian holds a career head coaching record of 84-51, including 13-2 this season.