'Sniper Mentality': Steve Sarkisian's Take on 'Emotion' for Longhorns vs. Oklahoma

For coach Steve Sarkisian and the Texas Longhorns, it's guns a blazing headed into the Red River Showdown with the Oklahoma Sooners in Dallas on Saturday in what should be an emotional contest. 

However, while Sarkisian wants his players to play with an emotion and love of the game, he doesn't want to see mistakes caused by getting too caught up in being emotional.

"We want to play with emotion," he said. "Football is a game of emotion, teams need to play with emotion. We just don't want to play emotional. That's a fine line. Cause when you play emotional, that's when you start doing things out of character." 

Using the 2007 movie "Shooter" with Mark Wahlberg as an example, Sarkisian said it takes balancing the focus and emotion within one's self to generate the greatest results.

"Clearly that guy had to have some emotion and had some things involved in him that were pushing him to do what he needed to do," Sarkisian said of the film."There had to be clarity, there had to be focus, there had to be mental intensity. If he was emotional, he'd have been erratic. So our goal is to kind of take on more of a sniper mentality. Have emotion, just not get emotional."

Considering how the results were for the Longhorns in last year's edition of this game - a loss that saw them blow a 28-7 lead and collapse in the second half - avoiding an over-emotional approach should be at the top of Texas' list. 

As always, Texas and OU kickoff from the Cotton Bowl at 11 a.m. CT on Saturday.

You can follow Zach Dimmitt on Twitter at @ZachDimmitt7

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