{"id":749430,"date":"2026-07-07T23:49:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/749430\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T23:49:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T23:49:17","slug":"joey-mcguire-has-high-praise-for-steve-sarkisian-but-would-still-play-texas-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/749430\/","title":{"rendered":"Joey McGuire has high praise for Steve Sarkisian, but would still play Texas “tomorrow”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A coach can\u2019t control the questions he\u2019s asked, but he can control the answers. At Big 12 media days, which began today, Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire<\/a> was asked about his offseason back-and-forth with Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[Sign up for Inside Texas for $1 then get 50% off your first year!]<\/a><\/p>\n

McGuire was again wanting to play the Longhorns, but he maintained a cordial demeanor in praising the work Sarkisian has done in his tenure in Austin.<\/p>\n

Question: \u201cI want to ask about some of the jabs from Steve Sarkisian, head coach of the Texas Longhorns, and how serious you were about getting that first game on the schedule and if we could see that in the future?\u201d<\/p>\n

McGuire: \u201cSpot the ball, man. We\u2019re ready to go right now. We\u2019ll play tomorrow. We don\u2019t need any film study or anything like that. I know they don\u2019t either. They\u2019ve got a great football team, one of the best teams in the country. <\/p>\n

\u201cI have a lot of respect for Sark. For people that have covered the University of Texas for a long time, what he\u2019s been able to do to be successful and sustain success, it\u2019s hard to do. Mack Brown<\/a> was the last coach to be able to do what he\u2019s doing. Before that \u2014 y\u2019all would have to help me who was before that other than Darrell Royal<\/a> that literally had the success Sark is having. I have a lot of respect for him. If you go back and look on record, I\u2019ve said continuously I think he\u2019s one of the best play-callers in the game today.<\/p>\n

\u201cShoot, we were texting the other day. Jeff Traylor<\/a> put me and Sark in a group text. There\u2019s a Division I panel at the THSCA coaching school. He wants to sit between us. I told Jeff he\u2019s going to have to step up in his sports coat game if he\u2019s going to sit between me and Sark. Sark is probably going to have that burnt orange sports coat. I\u2019m probably going to have this one or wear a red one.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to play it. I\u2019m a Texan. I was born in Texarkana, Texas in Wadley Regional Medical Center in 1971. I grew up in the Southwest Conference. Texas and Texas Tech are supposed to play. Texas and Texas A&M are supposed to play and they are playing. SMU is supposed to play. I\u2019d love to play Rhett Lashlee<\/a>. If you\u2019re a Texan and you\u2019re a fan of the football in this state, why would we go outside of the state to play non-conference games if we\u2019re not in conference anymore because you have such good football in this state?<\/p>\n

\u201cI would love to play Texas, Texas A&M, SMU\u2019s not in the conference, I would love to play those guys just because I think it\u2019s great for the state of Texas. It\u2019s great for the high school coaches and the high school players in the state of Texas. That might be one reason we have so many kids leaving the state, because we\u2019re not playing each other anymore. I remember when I was a high school coach growing up through the system, you didn\u2019t have as many kids leaving the state. Which was probably because the doors are open because we\u2019re playing so many others out of conference instead of playing each other.\u201d <\/p>\n

Even though the public war of words drew burnt orange and scarlet battle lines between the two fan bases, McGuire said Sarkisian was one of the coaches who reached out to him with words of encouragement during the recent Brendan Sorsby<\/a> saga.<\/p>\n

Joey McGuire said Eric Morris texted a ‘wellness check’ and even Sark texted him and was like, ‘man, this is not in the head coach’s manual anywhere.’<\/p>\n

\u2014 Nicole Auerbach (@NicoleAuerbach) July 7, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Sarkisian even spoke with admiration for McGuire during a June appearance<\/a> on the Up and Adams show. <\/p>\n

\u201cJoey was great about it,\u201d Sarkisian said. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t expect anything less from his response about changing our openers. How about we change our second game of the season and then we can have something to talk about?\u201d<\/p>\n

It appears as if the offseason war of words between the two schools never reached a heated level amongst the head coaches of the respective football programs. Despite McGuire\u2019s wishes, Texas won\u2019t play Texas Tech tomorrow nor in week one. The Longhorns are set to battle Texas State on September 5 at 2:30 p.m. to open the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coach can\u2019t control the questions he\u2019s asked, but he can control the answers. At Big 12 media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,141648,32689,122359,398,396,397,4504,94982,99,138790],"class_list":["post-749430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-football","tag-jeff-traylor","tag-joey-mcguire-89-crowley","tag-mack-brown-69-putnum-county","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaafootball","tag-regwall","tag-rhett-lashlee","tag-sports","tag-steve-sarkisian-92-west"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}