Long before NIL contracts and revenue-sharing checks existed, Mack Brown once asked Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds if a program expense would fit the budget. Dodds’ answer has become a Longhorn story: “Coach, you don’t have a budget”. That’s the blank-check culture Brown built his 2005 national title on, and it’s basically what Steve Sarkisian walked into, just with an actual legal way to pay players now.

Texas football alone accounted for nearly $74 million of the athletic department’s $375.9 million in operating expenses for fiscal 2025, which is the largest football spend of any athletic department in the country, per NCAA financial disclosures obtained by Sportico. But appearing on The Stampede: A Podcast on the Texas Longhorns, former coach Mack Brown explained why Steve Sarkisian’s biggest challenge is making sure the people receiving it fit the program.

“You’ve got to have a fit,” he said. “You’ve got to have a fit. Got to fit your place. Not everybody can play at Texas. Even if they’re talented enough, they may not be smart enough. They may not be classy enough. You’re going to be in the media. You’re going to be in the spotlight. So, you’ve got to be careful who you bring in here.”

He pushed the point further on team chemistry.

“Getting a team to work together is really, really difficult,” he said. “Especially when all of them are making a different amount of money… The fact that you’ve got money gives you a chance. It doesn’t guarantee you’re going to win.”

Brown’s larger point actually checks out against what’s happened around the sport lately. Texas A&M put together the nation’s top-ranked recruiting classes and made its first-ever College Football Playoff in 2025 at 11-2, then got bounced in the first round, losing 10-3 to Miami. Florida State kept spending and even restructured Mike Norvell’s deal, but still finished 5-7 and missed a bowl for the second year in a row. Meanwhile, Indiana, Vanderbilt, and Texas Tech, spending less than either of those programs, kept trending upward instead.

So, Brown added that Sarkisian deserves credit for more than just landing five-star recruits: “What Sark’s done is he is making sure that he’s trying to balance that money out and get the right fits and still coach them hard and still develop them. And I’m very impressed with that.”