Steve Sarkisian walks away from interview with ESPN's Holly Rowe. Credit: ESPN
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Steve Sarkisian broke his silence on what happened with Holly Rowe.

If you missed it, Sark’s Texas Longhorns just completed a 21-point fourth-quarter comeback to beat Ohio State, 24-23. ESPN’s Chris Fowler threw the broadcast down to Rowe, who was standing beside Sarkisian on the field. Rowe barely got out, “Coach, this was one of the most—” before Sarkisian cut her off. “That’s called Texas fight! Hook ’em!” he said, throwing up the Horns before walking off to find his players.

Rowe followed him a step with her microphone raised, then stopped, rolled her eyes, and walked off in the other direction.

It wasn’t the only awkward moment between Sarkisian and ESPN’s crew that night. Sideline reporter Laura Rutledge had lost track of him at halftime, too, chasing him toward the tunnel before he had to go. She told viewers at the time that technical difficulties were partly responsible, and that Sarkisian had “waited for a long time” and been patient with the delays.

A Texas spokesperson later told The Athletic that similar equipment issues resurfaced on the field after the game.

Sarkisian addressed both moments Wednesday during his weekly media session, via CJ Vogel of On Texas Football, as well as the fallout from Arch Manning making light of an AI-generated video depicting his head coach slapping Rowe in the face following the team’s win over Ohio State on Saturday.

“I want to address a couple of my in-game interviews last Saturday night at the Ohio State ball game,” he began. “The first, at halftime, I was scheduled to have an interview with Laura Rutledge. ESPN was having technical difficulties, and I had to make an in-the-moment decision to say, wait on the interview, or try to get with our team and try to make the proper adjustments to come out and play as good as we could in the second half. I let Laura know that, and I think she said that on air. And then I had an opportunity to visit with Laura when we came back out of the locker room to let her know where our thoughts were as a team and what we needed to do in the second half of that game.”

Regarding the postgame interview with Rowe, he offered more of an apology.

“As it pertains to after the ball game, again there was a delay after I greeted Coach Day in the middle of the field,” Sarkisian said. “There was a delay in the moment, and through that delay, I wanted to go celebrate with our team. We just had a 21-point fourth-quarter comeback against the No. 1 team in the country. If hindsight’s 20/20, if I could do it all over again, I would have exuded more patience in that moment and sat through and waited for the interview with Holly. Obviously, we have a ton of respect for ESPN and Holly. Holly and I go way back to even my days of playing at BYU, and we’ve got a great relationship. ESPN is a great partner of ours. We know we’re going to have more opportunities with that crew covering us, and we’re looking forward to those. So, could have definitely handled that situation better with a little bit more patience in the moment.”

His lack of patience with Rowe set the stage for that same moment to become the source of a much uglier controversy involving his own quarterback. The moment came about during Manning’s regular Monday media availability, two days after Texas engineered its stunning 20-point rally to beat Ohio State. Evan Vieth, a reporter for On3’s Inside Texas, had asked Manning a fairly innocuous question: whether he’d seen any of the TikTok and Twitter edits fans had assembled celebrating the win, but the conversation drifted toward an incident from Saturday’s postgame interview in which Sarkisian blew off Rowe during the post-game interview opportunity.

Manning issued a public apology to Rowe the following day, calling his comment “insensitive” and saying there was “nothing funny about it.” Rowe accepted, saying the two had spoken privately and would move forward “with respect and kindness for one another.”

“That obviously led to the situation with Arch and his press conference as it pertained to the AI video,” he said. “Obviously, Arch recognizes he made a mistake, and it’s an unfortunate one. Nowhere do we condone domestic violence or violence against women. Nothing in our program says that, nor Arch individually. I think if he could take it back, he would. But he has since apologized to Holly. He’s made a public apology, and our goal is that we can move forward and him be the guy that we all know that he is and what he represents.”

Why it took Sarkisian nearly this long to offer amends isn’t clear, but his silence gave the moment space to become the culture-war topic du jour, with commentators on both sides reading more into a few seconds on a football field than either he or Rowe likely intended.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann