Sarkisian speaks out against NFL players in CFB
Mike Florio and Chris Simms react to Texas' Steve Sarkisian's comments on NFL players returning to college football, as the head coach called it "morally wrong."
Video Transcript
These players on all of our rosters, not just ours, have been working for nine months for this moment on Saturday, which then will lead into the next five to six months.
The fact that somebody out there is gonna take a player on a, off of an NFL roster and tell somebody who's been doing it for nine months, "Go kick rocks," that doesn't sit well with me.
I think that's wrong.
That, that, that morally is wrong.
Steve Sarkisian, the Texas coach.
Texas fight, Texas fight, yeah, Texas fight.
Dropping the hammer on Lane Kiffin of LSU, who's trying to round up as many of these guys as he can.
And look, when I saw this yesterday, I thought, "Wow, this is, this is a strong statement."
But I put Steve Sarkisian in the same bucket as Dan Lanning, the Oregon coach.
It's easy to get up on a soapbox if you have assessed the available guys and you've decided none of them fit with what we're doing.
If they had a guy who had fallen into this category, class of '22, fifth-year guy, NFL contract, gonna get cut, can come back for his fifth year, and he's gonna make us better, they would've done it.
But once you've decided we don't want any of these guys, it's very easy to moralize on those who have decided they want those players.
So I reject this stuff.
Because I guarantee you, if Steve Sarkisian is a successful coach, and he is, he's gonna use any means that is available to improve his team, and he's telling guys all the time, "Sorry, you're not good enough to be on the team.
Sorry, you're not good enough to play."
Yeah, it's, it's a tough nuanced situation.
And it really is.
And I understand what he's saying about, "Yeah, we had a guy here that's been here and, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, but we're gonna push him off for a guy that hasn't been here."
But, but yeah, I mean, it, it's a little odd and weird, and there is nuance.
Because a lot of these guys wouldn't have gone on to the NFL if they knew the courts were gonna rule the way they did, and they would've stayed in college anyways.
So it's one year, we gotta figure out and deal with this right now.
And yeah, let's care for the young kids.
They really weren't on an NFL roster, because the rosters just got set.
Their ass got cut, so they're not on a roster.
They were on a fake roster, where there was 90 people on it, that you knew a lot of them weren't gonna make the team anyways.
They were cannon fodder.
Right.
And- They were Rudy.
You know, and, and not to College coaches push players out of programs all the time.
All the time.
So like, to the point you made, or a new coach comes in and he wants his guys.
And oh, they'll just look for some reason to knock a guy off the team, even though other guys have done the same things, but they just don't want this crew.
And they make them move along.
And yeah, you know, in this day and age with them getting paid money and stuff like that, I, I, it's not as egregious now to say, "Move along.
We got something else here."
It's become a business, and that's the way it is.
There's a performative element to all of this.
I believe that everyone involved in the college football ecosystem is trying to get Congress to pass the Protect College Sports Act, and they are making this thing into the biggest, ugliest cluster you-know-what that they can, in the hopes that they get the antitrust exemption that they want.
That's it for today's PFT Live.
