While funny on the surface, Steve Sarkisian’s drunken episode may be indicative of a serious problem

Former UW coach Steve Sarkisian, now at USC, publicly apologized for a drunken incident from Saturday. (AP)

You probably heard that USC coach Steve Sarkisian made a drunken fool of himself Saturday night at a booster function. He said a lot of inappropriate stuff and had to be yanked from the stage. Sarkisian issued a formal apology the next day and then said he was sorry again on Tuesday when he met with reporters. He indicated that his biggest mistake was mixing medication with alcohol.

I don’t know how you’ve reacted to this story. I admit to chuckling when I first heard about it and even snickering during Sarkisian’s Tuesday news conference. It’s funny on a lot of levels, especially if you’re not a Coach Sark fan, and I never was when he coached the Huskies. As a Coug, you never like whomever is coaching the U Dub and always hope he runs the Dawgs into the ground.

Sarkisian swerved a little while he was here but never executed a full-on Tyrone Willingham, who’s an honorary member of the Cougar Hall of Fame for being the worst coach in Washington football history, which made him our favorite coach. I still miss the man that I called “Paint Dry Ty” because he was so damn boring, but I loved him anyway because he gave us the best comeback to every low blow we ever get from Dawg fans.

It doesn’t matter what we hear from them, whether it’s “Mike Leach is awful,” “Paul Wulff was terrible” or a joke about Mike Price, we just reach into our back pocket and pull out: “Maybe so, but we’ve never gone 0-12 like you guys did in 2008.”

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. This is supposed to be about the bleep-faced Sarkisian, but I like to bring up that glorious 2008 season whenever I can.

Here’s the thing about Coach Sark: If he’s an alcoholic, the whole incident isn’t funny at all. It’s sad, not to mention troubling and disturbing.

He was asked by Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times if he had a drinking problem, and Sarkisian said he didn’t think that was the case but he was going to find out through treatment.

It’s easy to say he’s in denial. Here’s a 41-year-old man who has just put his dream job and likely $5 million annual salary in jeopardy because of booze. But let’s say his mixing-alcohol-with-medication explanation sounds plausible. Whatever he’s been prescribed, surely he was told by his doctor and pharmacist about the side effects, and if you somehow forget, it’s usually written right there on the bottle, advising the patient not to take it with alcohol. And you’d have to guess that Saturday night wasn’t the first time he drank while taking prescription drugs, so he must have been aware of the possible consequences.

Yet he chose to put himself in that position. At the Alcoholic Anonymous website, I looked at the 12-question test you can take to see if you have a drinking problem. From Sarkisian’s perspective, not knowing the whole situation, I could still come to the reasonable conclusion that he might’ve answered “yes” to at least three questions:

• Have you had problems connected with drinking in the past year?

• Has drinking caused trouble at home? (I don’t know if that’s true or not, but he went through a divorce last spring)

• Ever try to get extra drinks at a party because you do not get enough? (At Washington, he once expensed 40 shots of Patron tequila, though it’s unclear how many people were with him)

If you answer “yes” to four questions or more on the test, you probably have a drinking problem that should be addressed. If Sarkisian doesn’t have a problem, at least he’ll find out for sure, and if he does, his embarrassing incident might be the wake-up call he needed.

This week I’ve been a stick in the mud while Danny O’Neil and Dave Wyman were having fun at Sarkisian’s expense. Again, it’s just the element of Sarkisian perhaps being an alcoholic that stopped me from playing along.

It reminds me of the time that Mike Price went to that strip club in Pensacola, Fla. and threw away his job at Alabama. One bad night caused him to get a one-way ticket from Tuscaloosa to El Paso, and his coaching career – which shined so brightly at Washington State – was never the same again.

Coach Sark is one step from being ex-Coach Sark. The margin of error is already small at USC, and it’s minuscule now. Imagine the heat he’ll get after the Trojans’ first loss, and imagine what it will be like if Arizona State beats USC on another Hail Mary this year – he’ll be out the door.

At this point, Sarkisian has somehow dodged a suspension and kept his job. But I’m guessing whether sober or drunk, he won’t keep it for long.