AUSTIN – Leaning back in his office chair, Steve Sarkisian taps on his chest.
Thump. Thump.
His University of Texas T-shirt hides a seven-inch vertical scar stretching from the top of his rib cage to his stomach. Beneath it, his sternum is held together by wiring after doctors sawed through it three years ago. Beneath that, his beating heart pumps blood throughout his body with help from an implanted bioprosthetic valve from a farm animal.
“I’ve got pig s*** in here,” he says with a laugh.
He means a pig valve, and for those who have undergone surgery to repair a congenital anomaly for a bicuspid valve, it’s quite common. That’s a lot of complicated medical terms. In more simple phrasing, Sarkisian was potentially days and certainly weeks away from suffering a life-ending heart aneurysm.
“The comment from the doctor was that he would have dropped dead one day out on the field,” said Sarkisian’s friend and Texas assistant Jeff Banks.
In July 2020, during an intensive physical exam that Alabama administers annually on its football staff, physicians learned of the heart issue and sent Sarkisian into emergency surgery, where doctors put him into deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. They slowed his heart to a crawl, dropped his body temperature and then cut him open.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports last month, he spoke in depth for the first time about the situation.
“I was cleared to coach — miraculously at Alabama! — the night before camp,” Sarkisian says, now able to laugh about the ordeal. “At Alabama, we always joke, ‘Just send them to Birmingham and they’ll get you fixed!’ Well, they did.”
More than three years later, Sarkisian, mended heart and all, returns to Tuscaloosa to lead his 11th-ranked Texas Longhorns into a game against his former boss and program, the third-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide — a prime-time duel between the SEC’s longtime powerhouse against the SEC’s soon-to-be Goliath (at least from a revenue perspective).
sports.yahoo.com
Thump. Thump.
His University of Texas T-shirt hides a seven-inch vertical scar stretching from the top of his rib cage to his stomach. Beneath it, his sternum is held together by wiring after doctors sawed through it three years ago. Beneath that, his beating heart pumps blood throughout his body with help from an implanted bioprosthetic valve from a farm animal.
“I’ve got pig s*** in here,” he says with a laugh.
He means a pig valve, and for those who have undergone surgery to repair a congenital anomaly for a bicuspid valve, it’s quite common. That’s a lot of complicated medical terms. In more simple phrasing, Sarkisian was potentially days and certainly weeks away from suffering a life-ending heart aneurysm.
“The comment from the doctor was that he would have dropped dead one day out on the field,” said Sarkisian’s friend and Texas assistant Jeff Banks.
In July 2020, during an intensive physical exam that Alabama administers annually on its football staff, physicians learned of the heart issue and sent Sarkisian into emergency surgery, where doctors put him into deep hypothermic circulatory arrest. They slowed his heart to a crawl, dropped his body temperature and then cut him open.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports last month, he spoke in depth for the first time about the situation.
“I was cleared to coach — miraculously at Alabama! — the night before camp,” Sarkisian says, now able to laugh about the ordeal. “At Alabama, we always joke, ‘Just send them to Birmingham and they’ll get you fixed!’ Well, they did.”
More than three years later, Sarkisian, mended heart and all, returns to Tuscaloosa to lead his 11th-ranked Texas Longhorns into a game against his former boss and program, the third-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide — a prime-time duel between the SEC’s longtime powerhouse against the SEC’s soon-to-be Goliath (at least from a revenue perspective).
'He was a ticking time bomb' — Steve Sarkisian takes Texas back to the place that may have saved his life
Three years after life-saving surgery at Alabama, Steve Sarkisian is taking his Texas team to Tuscaloosa more grateful than ever.
