Texas beat Ohio State 24-23 in Columbus last Saturday night, erasing a 21-point fourth-quarter deficit against the No. 1 team in the country. The Longhorns are now No. 1 themselves. They have spent most of the week since talking about a sideline interview.
Here is the sequence, because it got scrambled fast.
The interviews, then the fakes
At halftime, ESPN had technical difficulties that delayed Steve Sarkisian’s interview with Laura Rutledge. He chose the locker room over the wait, told Rutledge so, and she relayed it on air. He circled back to her on the way out for the second half.
After the game, there was another delay. Sarkisian shook hands with Ryan Day, said a few words in Holly Rowe’s direction, and walked off toward his players. Rowe, on camera, gave a look that told you exactly how the moment landed. It was a small slight on a huge night, and on its own it would have been forgotten by Monday.
It was not forgotten, because AI-generated edits of the exchange started circulating. One of them depicted Sarkisian striking Rowe. That is a fabricated video of a woman being assaulted at work, built from real footage of a real reporter, and it spread far enough that everyone around the program knew it existed.
On Monday, Arch Manning was asked about the viral videos at a press conference. He raised that specific clip, asked reporters if they had seen it, called it a good one, and laughed while describing Sarkisian slapping Rowe. The room laughed with him, which is its own problem.
Manning apologized publicly the next day, calling his comment insensitive and saying there was nothing funny about it.
Sarkisian’s turn
Sarkisian addressed all of it Thursday during his regular weekly availability. He walked through the technical delays at halftime and after the game, said he wanted to celebrate a 21-point comeback with his team, and then got to the part that mattered.
“If hindsight’s 20/20, if I could do it all over again, I would have exuded more patience in that moment and sat through and waited for the interview with Holly,” he said. He noted that he and Rowe go back to his playing days at BYU and that Texas has “a ton of respect” for her and for ESPN.
On the videos he was unambiguous: “Nowhere do we condone domestic violence or violence against women.” He said Manning recognizes he made a mistake and has since apologized.
The take
Sarkisian said the right words. He also said them on day six, after his quarterback absorbed a full week of national criticism for a mess that started with a head coach walking away from a microphone.
Blowing off a sideline reporter is minor. Coaches do it. Rowe did her job and got stiffed on live television, and an eye roll was the mildest available response. She has been doing this for decades and she is owed better than a shrug.
What should actually alarm people has nothing to do with Texas football. Within hours, anyone with a phone could generate a convincing video of a well-known reporter being hit by a well-known coach, and enough people watched it that the starting quarterback of the No. 1 team in America brought it up unprompted at a podium. Rowe did nothing except stand there holding a microphone.
Manning corrected himself well once he understood the damage. Sarkisian eventually did too. Neither of them made the video. The tools that did are not going anywhere, and the next reporter this happens to probably will not get two public apologies out of it.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.