There are some people reading this now that, whether they knew they'd make a living doing it or not, knew that they wanted to end up being a football coach at a young age and therefore would have majored in coaching if they could have put all their eggs in that basket.
But since that isn't really a viable option for most, those that end up coaching major in a variety of other fields and end up with a degree in something else that interests them. Sometimes those things are related to football, in one way or another, while others are very different (like Mike Leach's Juris Doctor from Pepperdine University School of Law).
For Steve Sarkisian, that field was sociology, and he shared today in their first presser of the spring season how that choice has helped him develop perspective as a coach.
"I never knew that being a sociology major would apply so much to coaching."
"You really are trying to study people, and you're reading people and you're reading body language and you're reading trends, and habits."
Sark goes on to share the sentiment about locker room dynamics and how they parallel with the real world that so many other successful coaches have touched on over the years.
"A football locker room's not a lot different from society. I think a football locker room, when it's healthy, we all wish our society would act like that."
Sociology is defined as: "the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society," so it certainly makes sense how that would carry over to football, and specifically the locker room.
Sark goes on to share how his background in sociology has helped him observe a player's body language to see how committed they are to the new direction of the program.
"I do think reading body language, and reading actions of our players on the field, as well as off the field, tells me that there is a lot of buy in. When I see the attentiveness in our meetings and the attentiveness and attention to detail in our workouts and some of the things that we are asking them to do tells me that they're buying in, and that they're trying to buy in. Those are all positives, but we've got a long way to go."
"Those are just some of the things that we're looking for when trying to determine, are we bought in, or are we not?"
For some of his players in Austin, they'll be on their third coordinator in the past three seasons, but Sark took the opportunity today speaking with the media to put that in perspective.
"Football is not really new. A majority of people really run a lot fo the same plays - How we run them and why we run them. I think those are some of the questions we want our players to get answered."
Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.