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Transfer Cycle 2025-2026 - Pining For IOLs Who Can Fog A Mirror

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9 minutes ago, Hank_Hill said:

Maybe. Just saw above Colorado has 30 something players leaving. They got some spending to do

30 leaving... Is that more or fewer than in Deon's first year as HC there?

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2 minutes ago, ATXbronco said:

30 leaving... Is that more or fewer than in Deon's first year as HC there?

He’s bringing Louis!

Nakos

While Texas, Georgia and Florida have all expressed interest, sources have told On3 that Louisville is trending to land the Vanderbilt wide receiver. Posted 46 catches for 806 yards and seven touchdowns in 2025.

and we don't have any OL, aggy has 4-5 we need then and nothing. Flood needs to be replaced and we need OL.

Flood will end Sark's tenure here. Get rid of him asap and hire a competent person for OL. 4 years to get ready and Flood couldn't figure out the best pairings that we all saw. He is terrible.

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17 minutes ago, hornlife said:

Flood will end Sark's tenure here. Get rid of him asap and hire a competent person for OL. 4 years to get ready and Flood couldn't figure out the best pairings that we all saw. He is terrible.

Oh dear, it appears as though you’re lost. Let me point you in the right direction: https://www.surlyhorns.com/board/forum/2-football/

14 hours ago, Helobious said:

Get me Tony Diaz out of the portal and all will be forgiven

IMG_5841.jpeg

Offered by and visiting Bama this week. Already visited Iowa and Kentucky

Fuck the Michigan portal guys. Don’t want to be used as their leverage. Let someone else waste their time and money flying them in to wine/dine them while their agents negotiate a raise with Ellison

Edited by Billy Pilgrim

2 hours ago, Sgt. Slaughter said:

This cycle has made hiphop one sassy motherfucker.

2 hours ago, Sgt. Slaughter said:

This cycle has made hiphop one sassy motherfucker.

It does offer as question. This is not like Tech going all in for an OT and praying. We're missing on known targets for a "Well. your 500k isn't as good as theirs." why would that be? Compete for starting job? Be in rotation at least? Think any of the other schools offered similar? Oh, you trained by Flood who one every 5 years recruits well and has a first round, guess what, You're not it, back-up plan guy. You're replacing the fook ups he had over those 5 years hopefully. But maybe not as we both kinda suck.

Edited by hornlife

3 hours ago, hornlife said:

and we don't have any OL, aggy has 4-5 we need then and nothing. Flood needs to be replaced and we need OL.

Blown Away Reaction GIF by CBS

21 minutes ago, hornlife said:

It does offer as question. This is not like Tech going all in for an OT and praying. We're missing on known targets for a "Well. your 500k isn't as good as theirs." why would that be? Compete for starting job? Be in rotation at least? Think any of the other schools offered similar? Oh, you trained by Flood who one every 5 years recruits well and has a first round, guess what, You're not it, back-up plan guy. You're replacing the fook ups he had over those 5 years hopefully. But maybe not as we both kinda suck.

Are you having a stroke?

Just wondering if this is how we are doing our Oline evaluations lately?

OIP.aLjhKkfsGAekD0jL-FwHGAHaEK?pid=Api&P=0&h=220

So Texas is currently down 14 players from the portal (7-21), with a firm ~5-6 positions clearly in play. Are there really another 8 players coming in on top of that to replace those that hit the portal? Wild roster turnover.

On my sales team I tell my sales execs not to worry about the numbers. Just sell and the numbers will take care of themselves.

32 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

So Texas is currently down 14 players from the portal (7-21), with a firm ~5-6 positions clearly in play. Are there really another 8 players coming in on top of that to replace those that hit the portal? Wild roster turnover.

You haven’t heard the latest excuse? We’re going to a NFL roster construction!

39 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

So Texas is currently down 14 players from the portal (7-21), with a firm ~5-6 positions clearly in play. Are there really another 8 players coming in on top of that to replace those that hit the portal? Wild roster turnover.

Yes.

7 minutes ago, BurntOrange&White said:

You haven’t heard the latest excuse? We’re going to a NFL roster construction!

That is the latest spin. I don't even know what the hell that is supposed to mean.

9 minutes ago, deech said:

Yes.

That is the latest spin. I don't even know what the hell that is supposed to mean.

53 man rosters?

If executed correctly I think going to a roster of 60-65 players make sense, however I have no faith this staff would be able to do so.

Today is the day.

I could see a roster where 50-60 guys are getting paid and then another 40-50 on the backend that would normally be somewhere like Tarleton providing depth for the schollie and the memories

It probably takes 60-65 players to have meaningful practices, play all the games and give yourself enough cushion for an in-season viral outbreak. Virtually all get to play in a few games. Adding another 10-15 guys is reasonable, if only because there's room on the bus and sideline towels won't wave themselves.

Edited by Gut Wagon

10 minutes ago, Js1 said:

Good bot

Who was the guy that used to post shit like ^ all the time. I don't think he posts her anymore

Travel roster is 70 players. Anything fewer than that is risking it imo. 75 seems right if “nfl model” is the play, Not 60-65.

Doing that means you better fucking hit on your HS evaluations as well as be dead nuts in the portal in your acquisition of talent.

Edited by BurntOrange&White

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On 1/7/2026 at 10:44 AM, Hiphopopotamos said:

Bobby said on this mornings Coffee & Football that he had a source tell him ‘don’t be surprised if Texas is done with OL (in the portal) by Friday’.

O/U on how many times OTF chat brings this up today before Bobby loses his temper?

1 minute ago, satyanash said:

O/U on how many times OTF chat brings this up today before Bobby loses his temper?

8:17 am, giving Bobby benefit of doubt and assuming the show starts at 8:15

2 minutes ago, satyanash said:

O/U on how many times OTF chat brings this up today before Bobby loses his temper?

Let's see what it all means.

6 hours ago, hornlife said:

and we don't have any OL, aggy has 4-5 we need then and nothing. Flood needs to be replaced and we need OL.

6 hours ago, hornlife said:

Flood will end Sark's tenure here. Get rid of him asap and hire a competent person for OL. 4 years to get ready and Flood couldn't figure out the best pairings that we all saw. He is terrible.

Speak Bethenny Frankel GIF

Just now, Js1 said:

Speak Bethenny Frankel GIF

Bitching about SarkTexasFootball is all of our hobbies

For those of you in the know, why wouldn't we be in on the IOL from Texas State?

Brock, from Brock, TX and Brock High School.

He's got great offers...Bama, Pedo, OU, Florida et al.

On3 has him 25% to Bama and 23% to Florida

Edited by Tylerocks

(Scipio Tex) 30 transfer portal rules to remember this cycle

Pin the following list on your refrigerator. Even if you have to throw away your kid’s drawings. They’re not that good, honestly.

Paul’s Portal Rules

  • In a pure bidding war, you are at the mercy of your dumbest competitor.

  • Not all portal recruitments are pure bidding wars.

  • Most portal recruitments are pure bidding wars.

  • Any sufficiently motivated second or third-tier program can outbid Texas on any single player. This doesn’t mean _____ > Texas, you fool.

  • No one carries the expectations, hopes, and excuses of the wrong longer than a failed former five star recruit.

  • Every FBS program is an interested billionaire away from potential relevance.

  • Known commodities cost a premium. Wholesale bargains are found in the unknowns and margins, but if you don’t have an apparatus to discover them, start bidding.

  • Be rich or be resourceful.

  • Better yet, be rich AND resourceful.

  • Rich fails if it can’t evaluate.

  • Don’t blindly add talent. Add talent targeted to the system. Then have a system flexible enough to make use of broad talent.

  • The portal is bargaining at a bazaar, not a chain supermarket.

  • Rebuilding primarily with the portal is tap dancing on a razor’s edge. The stakes make it exciting, but slips are brutally punished.

  • It’s easier and cheaper to retain than to recruit. Have players worth retaining.

  • Never overpay inertial bias.

  • Emotional fans who demand retaining Player X “at any price” will be the first to call for your firing when the roster sucks. Ignore them.

  • Players who aren’t in the portal are definitionally not “misses.”

  • 95% of running backs are a function of their supportive ecosystem. Evaluate them by what they added to the play, not how they benefitted.

  • If incapable of distinguishing a player’s ability from their ecosystem, silence is the sleep that nourishes wisdom.

  • If you logjam studs at a position, losing one who goes on to star elsewhere is indicative of program health, not failure.

  • A number of incremental improvements across the board can result in a massive total upswing.

  • Replacing awful with average is a discrete triumph.

  • Sunk cost fallacies destroy businesses, nations, and football programs.

  • At Texas, complacency is the default. Create positive tension, motivate insecurity, recruit hunger.

  • Inertia is a whispering demon and no one has ever successfully exorcized it permanently from the 40 Acres. Belief, fervor, vigilance.

  • HS recruit and develop in the trenches. If you botch it, raise your hand, mea culpa, and hit the portal hard. Then autopsy why.

  • Experienced players at key decision-making positions with just enough ability are incredibly valuable.

  • Experienced players without enough ability are a white board delusion. The middling player with 35 career starts sees it, but he can’t do anything about it.

  • Balance need with cost and impact. Multiple bites at the apple can trump the quest for the Golden Apple.

  • Injuries are terrible and unfair, but it’s now pro football, not a food bank. Vitality curves are remorseless.

**

Learn it, know it, live it.

(Scipio Tex) When Things Are Chaotic, Panic Makes It Better

A few thoughts on where we are right now. Calm is contagious, but right now calm is being treated like ebola. Alright, that’s too dramatic. Scabies?

THE PORTAL PANIC OF 2026

Minute-by-minute updates – even IT’s sound reporting – in the midst of chaos doesn’t lend itself to perspective. Even if the reporting is loaded with it. It simply won’t be processed that way. One lives and dies with every rumor or report, to the degree that I see hand-wringing over losing rostered players who are demonstrably not assets. The sheer volume of change seems to create a sense of loss, such that we have otherwise reasonable people deluding themselves into the idea that we lost some Platonic ideal of CJ Baxter who never existed rather than the actual player that we saw play.

Cognitive inertia is powerful. Your $9.95 gives you unalienable rights to panic and writing “But portal sucks lol” under an Arch Manning mechanics discussion, but don’t be upset if I don’t manipulatively echo your emotions back to you. That may feed you in the moment, but that’s not leadership, or even friendship. That’s social media grift.

REALITY BITES

Losing promising or good players at a stacked position sucks, but that’s a sign of program health, not weakness. The halcyon days of the loaded 2022 Texas RB room – featuring five eventual NFL draft picks – are likely over. Losing good players in areas of need are another story. Can you name them so far? It’s hard for Texas fans to consider that we started replacement level talent in several spots. You should be more concerned about the questions that raises.

Some losses will reflect the new realities of college football and the ability to aggregate elite depth, some are enforcing a much-needed vitality curve, a few could be own goals. The final additions will be crucial in rendering a final judgement as to whether we lost or won the portal, but losing a player that’s not going to perform or is a lower tier SEC starter is not a loss. I used to ridicule people who would proclaim our “tremendous depth” in preseason previews during the late Mack and Herman era because we were four or five deep with names at every position…but maybe two total guys that could actually play?

But TREMENDOUS DEPTH. See the names? So many names. First names, surnames. Depthy names. So much depth that Aquaman presides over them. False depth ain’t depth. It’s a lie. Clear it out and confront the reality of your real depth chart. We’re doing that now, and there will be some Final Destination style jump scares.

PAULIE’S PORTAL PAMPHLET

The rules were an attempt to engender a little perspective, but the people who need to read them won’t. I’m concerned about some things in the portal, but almost none of them involve losing below average to mediocre or unproven players who want more money. I am concerned about some of what the portal revealed. About the new realities of college football, about roster asymmetries, the abject lack of professionalism and competence in some player representation, the manipulability of players, the seeming lack of prioritized execution in player personnel departments and their ad hoc structures, and the increasing distance that it’s all creating between college football fans and the players.

The last part is existential to the game, but I can’t fix it. Texas has roster asymmetries that need to be addressed. We are not alone. To land an elite recruiting class, you’re going to pay a bunch of 18 year olds big numbers for the right to find out if they’re actually good. Some of them aren’t, a few are immediately ruined by the money, some will be very good sometime down the road, but Texas can’t pay all of them a premium to sit on the bench for three plus years and grow into their powers. Some players might grow up on their third stop in the portal, but we’re Stop #1. So you renegotiate.

RESETTING THE MARKET ON CAMPUS

That’s an inherently fraught conversation. The player has been told that they have an intrinsic market value of X irrespective of actual contribution and you’re coming to them with Y. Their representatives are too often Ben Affleck’s character in Good Will Hunting at the job interview (“retainnnnnner!”), and we’re competing with other programs who can float irresponsible numbers that they may not deliver on. The messaging from Texas here has also been poorly coordinated, if not fumbled. We don’t look very buttoned up in some spots.

Messaging players you value and would like to keep, but you can’t pay the same anymore, may be a hard conversation, but it’s easy to coordinate for maximum impact. Get their position coach and coordinator involved, at minimum, and sell the vision, detail the new realities of college football, and explain that the money can grow just as easily again based on performance. “We must pay for production now. Last year was the bonus to bring you here. But now you have to earn. And we’ll do everything possible to get your production up, with pay commensurate to same. Nothing has changed in how we view you. Here’s our vision for you, here’s how you can realize it.”

You’ll win some, lose some. But at least position yourself to win. Combine all of those elements and this is far from a frictionless environment. If you believe that the player’s initial comp level is sacrosanct irrespective of their contribution, I hear you comrade. New Five Year Plan will much increase wheat production for glory of people. Get outta here. Also, the “Well, if my boss cut my comp I’d be mad and leave, too!” reasoning doesn’t exactly hold. Because last year you didn’t sell a single widget. You left that part out.

So if we want to pretend that a college program’s developmental timeline is the same as contract employment (it’s not), I wouldn’t cut your comp in that scenario: I’d fire you. Now you really mad, huh. Texas – like every other college program – has effectively overpaid for the right to get athletes on campus. They must renegotiate. If they hadn’t paid up, I’m sure you’d all be stoked about our #28 ranked recruiting class of reasonable value, right?

Texas is taking some swings at some big names and if you read the rules, you know that playing defense is easier than offense. Even when our offer is the best. And every portal recruitment is not a pure bidding war. Except when it is. Now we will get clarity about how our personnel organization deals with finding secondary and tertiary options. Either they have guys queued up or it’s a mad scramble.

As for Texas organizationally, you’re either paying retail – and the worst kind of retail for price exploration: a blind auction with a rebidding process! – or you also have an apparatus to pay wholesale (purposeful scouting departments and a clear order of operations for bringing in talent) to create early relationships that can create discounts. Not to mention retention. A small number of programs are ahead of the curve here.

From what I can gather, the scouting we have is largely reactive, not proactive. Instagram presence and informal coaching networks to find players is very different from a team of film grinders that you trained up going to their experienced personnel evaluator boss and saying: “Cornerback, UC-Davis. Raw, but didn’t play football until his senior year of high school in rural California, 20 points per game high school basketball player. Long jumped 23.6. 6-0, 162 pounds when he got on campus, now 182. Here’s twenty plays. Fifteen good, five bad. Fix technique, we think he’s a 3rd corner, perhaps a senior starter. We could get him here for 20K.”

Do we have a high level negotiator? Because increasingly, we are going to be doing that with real agents who do this for a living. Not uncles and jumped-up street agents. There’s a lot of stuff that Texas can do better organizationally and structurally to deal with the brave new world, but I’m not grabbing a pitchfork and torch because we have to renegotiate contracts or are enforcing a vitality curve. I’m a lot more interested in examining our processes for acquisition, evaluation, retention, and negotiation. Let the portal play out fully before making a judgement. It’s about to get interesting.

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Bobby said this morning that Texas and Zina came to an agreement to return.

He also said a source told him the portal madness isn't close to slowing down. Said to expect 1,000+ more entries with some big names.

3 minutes ago, Tylerocks said:

For those of you in the know, why wouldn't we be in on the IOL from Texas State?

Brock, from Brock, TX and Brock High School.

He's got great offers...Bama, Pedo, OU, Florida et al.

Because apparently Flood only watched the Cheez It Bowl to find his portal players

1 minute ago, Elmer_Fudd said:

Bobby said this morning that Texas and Zina came to an agreement to return.

He also said a source told him the portal madness isn't close to slowing down. Said to expect 1,000+ more entries with some big names.

Absolutely believe it.

Teams who didn't get their plan As are going to entice their plan Bs into the portal - at great cost. (Yes, including us)

2 hours ago, Leanderman said:

Just wondering if this is how we are doing our Oline evaluations lately?

OIP.aLjhKkfsGAekD0jL-FwHGAHaEK?pid=Api&P=0&h=220

I was so excited to receive that for xmas 1975. It was such a piece of shit.

1 minute ago, Js1 said:

Absolutely believe it.

Teams who didn't get their plan As are going to entice their plan Bs into the portal - at great cost. (Yes, including us)

And the playoff teams still have to go through the gauntlet.

Just now, kevwun said:

And the playoff teams still have to go through the gauntlet.

Yep. Ole Miss is up, Oregon/Indiana loser is on deck.

Get Ready Nigel GIF

6 minutes ago, Elmer_Fudd said:

Bobby said this morning that Texas and Zina came to an agreement to return.

He also said a source told him the portal madness isn't close to slowing down. Said to expect 1,000+ more entries with some big names.

This is great news.

This is terrible news.

1 hour ago, deech said:

Yes.

That is the latest spin. I don't even know what the hell that is supposed to mean.

It means high school recruiting becomes more like college basketball recruiting is now. A program like Texas will recruit 8-10 blue chip 5 star type players who are going to cost big money but will be expected to produce right away. The rest of the class, 8-10 players, is filled with 2 star kids who don’t cost anything and who might have developmental upside and hopefully stick around a few years. All of the current 3 or 4 star kids end up playing at smaller/lower level schools becausd they’re not worth the investment - let the G5/FCS programs develop them. Texas can poach them later after a year or two of college S&C and they’ve proven themselves.

This also assumes smaller rosters, allowing NIL/Rev Share to be concentrated on top end talent and fewer dollars wasted on high school development that never pans out. .

As cutthroat as it is to say, I wonder if it would be beneficial to schools like Texas to be more systematic with their tampering. Like an inside man at a few schools like Arizona, UH and the directional Florida schools that typically have some talent. Scoutin and crootin

Just now, Hiphopopotamos said:

It means high school recruiting becomes more like college basketball recruiting is now. A program like Texas will recruit 8-10 blue chip 5 star type players who are going to cost big money but will be expected to produce right away. The rest of the class, 8-10 players, is filled with 2 star kids who don’t cost anything and who might have developmental upside and hopefully stick around a few years. All of the current 3 or 4 star kids end up playing at smaller/lower level schools becausd they’re not worth the investment - let the G5/FCS programs develop them. Texas can poach them later after a year or two of college S&C and they’ve proven themselves.

This also assumes smaller rosters, allowing NIL/Rev Share to be concentrated on top end talent and fewer dollars wasted on high school development that never pans out. .

We really need to kick some funds to Texas State to be our development program. Ha.

9 hours ago, TejasPedro said:

Is Bo Jackson seriously in the portal? Who’s next, Orenthal James Simpson? This portal thing has gone completely off the rails.

Oj Simpson GIF

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