Imagine you’re at your favorite burger spot. You order a double cheeseburger, fries, and a shake for about $15. Sarkisian makes roughly $10.4 million a year. That’s about 693,000 of those burger meals every single year. You could feed every person in Austin, Texas, a burger for a month and still have leftovers.
Or think of it this way: if you earn $60,000 a year, it would take you about 173 years to make what Sark makes in one season. That’s longer than America has been a country. He’s one football season away from being a Founding Father of your retirement fund.
Why Should You Care? (Besides the Obvious Envy)
Here’s a little story. Last Saturday, my neighbor Larry spent an hour trimming his hedge. He was grumbling about a $50 electric trimmer. Meanwhile, Sarkisian’s paycheck is equivalent to Larry trimming hedges for 200,000 straight hours. That’s 22 years of non-stop, no-sleep hedge trimming. Larry’s hedge would be a bonsai tree by then.
But here’s the fun part: Sark’s salary isn’t just a number. It’s a thermometer for the whole sport. When Texas pays a coach ten million, it tells you how badly they want to beat Oklahoma and Alabama. It’s like when you pay extra for overnight shipping because you really, really want those concert tickets. Texas is paying for overnight championship dreams.
Texas Coach Steve Sarkisian Salary - USA TODAY
