Steve Sarkisian walks away from interview with ESPN's Holly Rowe. Credit: ESPN
By Tyler Lauletta on

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The No. 4 Texas Longhorns scored 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to complete a stunning comeback against No. 1 Ohio State on Saturday night.

It was a hectic final sequence on the field. The Longhorns scored their final touchdown with just 25 seconds to play, leaving Ohio State out of timeouts and with little time to operate to get in position for another game-swinging score. When the Buckeyes were tackled in the open field with just a few seconds left, quarterback Julian Sayin was forced to rush into one final desperate Hail Mary to try and get a play off before the game ended.

Sayin got the snap, but the Longhorns intercepted the ball, allowing the party to truly begin.

While the clock had hit zero, the scene on the field was still plenty hectic, made even more confusing as Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian appeared to blow off ESPN’s Holly Rowe for the traditional postgame interview.

When the ESPN on ABC broadcast got down to Rowe standing alongside Sarkisian, the coach already seemed ready to jet out of frame.

“That’s called Texas fight! That’s called Texas fight! Hook ’em!” Sarkisian said as Rowe attempted to ask him a question. He then threw up the horns and walked toward the team celebrating behind the shot. Rowe gave a look to the camera that suggested frustration.

It wasn’t the first time that Sarkisian and the ESPN on ABC crew had missed each other on an interview opportunity, as a similar scene played out at halftime.

“Alright, we actually just lost Sark because he had to go,” Laura Rutledge explained to the broadcast when it was thrown down to her at the break with the Longhorns trailing 20–3. “I’m sorry about that, you guys. He waited for a long time. Credit to him for waiting. We’ll try to get him on the way out of the half.”

After the break, Rutledge explained that, “He had waited a long time, been very patient with some technical issues that we had. He apologized to us. We should be apologizing to him, which we did.”

Brushing off the halftime interview after waiting is one thing. There is a limited amount of time, and Sarkisian got restless because he wanted to use every minute to the best of his abilities. That feels like a very college football coach move. But brushing off the postgame interview is another thing. There is not ticking clock demanding your attention elsewhere.

Across the internet, people weighed in, most of them befuddled by Sarkisian’s behavior, and complimentary of Rowe for handling the situation as calmly as she did. Check out some of the reactions below.

So what happened here? It’s understandable that most people’s immediate reaction was to think that Sarkisian just felt like blowing off the interview because he was over it, and didn’t care about what such a move would look like to viewers at home.

If you want to give a more generous reading, maybe ESPN experienced technical issues again, and Sarkisian, having already dealt with it, simply decided he didn’t feel like waiting again and got out of there. He wouldn’t have known about ESPN’s on-air apology earlier in the game, and in the heat of the moment, maybe he just didn’t want to waste his time again.

Even if that is the case, the optics are brutal for Sarkisian, and it means he may have questions to answer about the interaction that have nothing to do with the epic comeback his team just pulled off.

About Tyler Lauletta

Tyler is a editorial contributor at Awful Announcing, with previous stops at Sports Illustrated and Business Insider during his career covering sports in digital media. He is, begrudgingly, a Truster of the Process and general Philly sports sicko.

View all posts by Tyler Lauletta