Steve Sarkisian Gets Brutally Honest About Dealing with Agents in Transfer Portal

The college football landscape has changed plenty, with one of the new aspects being players having agents, as Steve Sarkisian discusses working with them.

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian claps during warmups before the game against the Kentucky Wildcats at Kroger Field. | Jordan Prather-Imagn Images

The Texas Longhorns finally close out the 2025 season, looking to create some momentum to be springboarded into an important 2026 season.

The Longhorns end the year taking on the Michigan Wolverines in the Citrus Bowl at Camping World Stadium in Orlando on New Year's Eve. Ahead of the matchup, the Longhorns have been heavily impacted by end of year roster attrition, with players heading off to the transfer portal or the NFL Draft.

Texas has already lost some of its key players in this window, and while Steve Sarkisian is preparing his squad to square off against Michigan, he also broke down the challenges this new day and age of college football presents.

Steve Sarkisian Opens Up About Dealing with Agents

Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian pauses during the second half against the Arkansas Razorbacks at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. | Scott Wachter-Imagn Images

At a press conference ahead of the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl on Tuesday morning, Sarkisian spoke at length about one of the new areas of college football, especially when dealing with players and roster retention, that being the players' agents and the difficulties about the role of agents in college football.

"There's some agents that are rational, and there's some that this is their first time ever being an agent," Sarkisian said. "I don't even know if they're licensed to be agents, but all of a sudden they get to be agents because we have no certification process in college football."

#Texas HC Steve Sarkisian didn't hold back when it comes to dealing with agents.

"There's some agents that are rational and there's some that this is their first time to ever be an agent. I don't even know if they're licensed... We can't even deal with this." pic.twitter.com/68LDpKet81

— OnTexasFootball (@ontexasfootball) December 30, 2025

Sarkisian compared how agents operate in college football compared to the way they operate in the NFL, and the requirements and certifications needed to be an agent in the NFL and the lack thereof in college.

"Where in the NFL you have to be certified, in college football, it might be their college roommate, their freshman year, who's their agent right now," Sarkisian said. "And this guy is throwing numbers at you, and it's like we can't even deal with this, you just move on, and so it's unfortunate, but we'll get there in college football, but right now it's a tough situation."

The Longhorns head coach understands the reality, and where college football is trending towards, and he does wish that someday, there is regulation put in place, as well as highlighting a likely conversation he will have with an agent that lays out the difficulties of dealing with contract talks.

"That's the reality of the situation in college football right now, that's where we are, again, I think there's nothing wrong with that, we just have to tighten it up, and hopefully we can get there sooner rather than later," Sarkisian said. "I'm probably going to be on the phone with an agent today, that's going to throw a number at me, that I'm going to be like, good luck, I hope you get it, if you don't call us back, but I can't do that number."