Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian declined to give a full post-game interview to ESPN on Saturday night after his team rallied from a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit to upset top-ranked Ohio State.
As sideline reporter Holly Rowe attempted to begin the interview, saying, “Coach, this was one of the most—” Sarkisian spoke over her, appearing to say, “That’s called Texas fight.” He then said “Hook ’em!”, gave the “Hook ’em Horns” hand sign to the camera, and left. Rowe rolled her eyes and walked away rather than follow him.
The moment came after an earlier incident at halftime, when ESPN on ABC sideline reporter Laura Rutledge chased after Sarkisian as he headed into the tunnel.
“Alright, we actually just lost Sark because he had to go. 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,” Rutledge said.
Rutledge added that Sarkisian had declined the halftime interview after waiting through some technical issues on ESPN’s end.
“I do want to make sure we clear something up. [Sarkisian] did decline the interview at the half. 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,” Rutledge said.
The victory avenged Texas’s loss to Ohio State in Columbus last year. With the win, Texas is expected to move into the No. 1 spot in the Associated Press poll when updated rankings are released.
