AUSTIN (KXAN) — Two talented quarterbacks in Arch Manning and DJ Lagway will clash in Gainesville on Saturday when No. 8 Texas heads to Ben Hill Griffin Stadium to take on Florida, and they’ll be under a powerful microscope to see if they’ll rise to lofty expectations.
Both quarterbacks are in their first seasons as the full-time starter, and they were hyped up to a fever pitch in the preseason. Suffice to say, neither signal caller has lived up to the hype, which in Manning’s case, has been called “out of control” by head coach Steve Sarkisian.
Sarkisian said he and his staff are working with all the players to navigate the intensified media coverage of college football in the NIL and transfer portal era. It’s something that continues to evolve, and after watching several college games this week while on a bye, Sarkisian said he’s not sure if anyone could legitimately meet media expectations.
“The coverage over college football is more and more intense than it’s ever been, and so players are getting put up on these pedestals really quickly in their careers,” he said. “And I felt like this weekend, I could feel some guys pressing, not so different maybe, than Arch was pressing early on, to where they feel like they have to live up to.”
Sarkisian said it all comes back to one thing — playing for the love of the game and not treating it like a job.
“We’ve got to do a really good job of putting them in the right mental space to where they’re still enjoying playing the game of football with their college football teammates,” he said. “That’s the point to these guys, and I think that they got to play for the love of the game, because they do love the game. They need to play football and not work football. And I think that that’s something we’ve been working on with Arch.”
For Manning, his numbers look good through four weeks of nonconference play, but there have been performances that have missed the mark, both the quarterback and the coach acknowledge. Sarkisian said the bye week came at a great time to help them work through some of those issues, like not letting a previous play affect future plays and trying to slow the game down when it starts to speed up.
A lot of that goes back to trying to block out voices from outside the program and focusing on the process internally, but at the same time, college kids have phones and access to social media and 24/7 sports talk, just like everybody else. Sometimes they can’t help but hear what people are saying about them.
Sarkisian isn’t blaming anyone, saying that he respects reporters and that the sport wouldn’t be as popular as it is today without them. His focus is on teaching his players how to deal with all the voices out there.
“I think it’s educating our players on how to deal with what everybody has to say about them, and focus on what they need to do behind the scenes, rather than playing based on the opinions of others, and that’s a hard thing as a young person,” he said. “As much as college football has evolved, the coverage of college football has evolved, and constructive criticism has risen. All those things have changed from what they were 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago. It’s different today, and we have to evolve with the times and with the changing times, and we’ve got to do a better job as coaches.”
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