A 13-12 record is bad enough, but Steve Sarkisian’s horrendous pre-game Alamo Bowl actions should lead to termination.

In case you missed it, he absolutely went off on an employee working the game right before leading the Texas Longhorns out of the tunnel to play the Washington Huskies. If one can read lips, it’s pretty obvious what happened.

Just to be clear, here’s what the head coach said:

“Don’t f—ing touch me again motherf—-r!Get your f—ing hands off me!”

Should the employee have placed his hand on Sarkisian’s chest? Probably not. That having been the case, there’s never a reason to act like Sarkisian did for such a simple act.

On top of that, at a place like Texas? Are you kidding?

It’s one of the best academic institutions in the country. It has prestige written all over it, academically and athletically in the Big 12 Conference. Of course that leads to a really troubling situation for the Texas administration, most notably athletic director Chris Del Conte.

He is now in the midst of a complete no-win situation. Firing a coach that’s at least trying to rebuild the program, and has shown some signs of progress, means starting all over.

That’s never fun to begin with, but that’s the least of the issues for Del Conte, University President Jay Hartzell and the Texas board of trustees.

There’s of course the contract buyout for Sarkisian if he is indeed relieved of his duties as Texas head coach. The Longhorns’ boosters might be called upon to help with that if Sarkisian ends up being let go. Still, there’s more fallout that could be much more troubling, long term.

Here are a few reasons why.

How can one of the so-called leaders of the University of Texas be someone that acts like that? That’s first and foremost. College students, and parents often paying for that education, should not be subjected to believing that’s acceptable behavior. Sarkisian represented those students, fair or not, with his tirade.

What would have happened if a college professor went through a similar exchange with another person and it was released to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and all across the world?

They’d be gone, post haste. Consider the following as well.

Can you imagine how opposing coaches will recruit against Texas? Make no mistake, numerous college coaches, and entire coaching staffs, will ask parents why they would trust their kids to be around a head coach with the power of the Texas head coach that acts like Sarkisian did.

That’s negative recruiting 101. Discussing coaching character flaws, traditionally speaking, has also been proven to be extremely impactful over the decades. No reason to believe that’s changed.

Yes, Texas hired what they believed would be the savior from the University of Alabama in coach Sarkisian. It didn’t work out. There’s got to be someone to represent Texas athletics and the school as a whole better than that.

Fire him.