As college football inches closer to the 2025 regular season, the Texas Longhorns find themselves in a ideal position. Not only are they a clear favorite to win the national title, but they’re doing it with a roster and recruiting strategy that dwarfs the rest of the country’s blue bloods. They are literally lapping the field. For fans in Austin and beyond, the message is clear—this is the moment Texas has been building towards.
Despite Texas’ storied tradition and the SEC’s reputation as the toughest conference in college football, the Longhorns have managed to fly somewhat under the radar this offseason. In the midst of this (relatively) low media attention, head coach Steve Sarkisian has crafted one of the nation’s most balanced postseason runs. He’s been winning big recruiting battles, thriving in the transfer portal, and prepping his roster for a national championship caliber season. As others focus on flash and social media bravado, Texas still remains as the top team in football.
If there were any doubts about Texas’s recruiting, their latest coup puts them to rest. According to top recruiting analyst Hayes Fawcett, elite 2026 running back Derrek Cooper, a 6’2”, 210-pound force from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has committed to Texas over Miami and perennial powerhouse Georgia. Cooper, ranked as the number two back in his class, joins a jaw-dropping collection of young talent.
The Longhorns’ 2026 haul now boasts (again, according to Fawectt):
- The number one quarterback, Dia Bell
- The number one linebacker, Tyler Aktinson
- The number one defensive lineman, JJ Johnson
- The number three edge rusher, Richard Wesley
Few programs have seen this level of recruiting dominance, and certainly not this early in a class cycle.
Texas’s ability to consistently win battles for out-of-state, top-tier recruits, especially against SEC rivals, reflects how elite high school talents view the program. These prospects view Austin as the premier destination for winning. In fact, the recruiting wave itself is being fueled by how good Texas already is in 2025, with athletes and coaches seeing immediate success and wanting to jump aboard a program trending sharply upward.
While the recruiting reports seem to indicate that Texas is elite, we wanted to find some data to support (or reject) that claim. So we created a model to evaluate the top 12 programs in college football. This model uses ESPN’s Football Power Index to factor current talent, it uses average recruiting class quality to factor and future talent, and then weights transfer impact. The result is the model places Texas as significantly better than any other program.
Even when transfers are removed from the equation Texas maintains its standing.
Note: We like to evaluate the model with and without transfers. This is because transfers can be incredibly hard to evaluate. For example, it would have been impossible to model the impact Joe Burrow would’ve had transferring to LSU from Ohio state years ago.
Simply put, there’s a gulf between Texas and everyone else. Looking at both versions of the model, it’s clear there are four discrete tiers:
- Tier One: Texas (by itself)
- Tier Two: Georgia, Oregon, Alabama, Ohio State, Notre Dame
- Tier Three: Penn State, Miami, LSU
- Tier Four: Tennessee, USC, Clemson
The analytics make an ironclad case: Texas sits alone in an elite championship tier, leaving contenders like Georgia, Oregon, Alabama, and Notre Dame in a distinct lower category.
For all the talk of Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Oregon, it’s Texas that stands alone. To be fair (and to state the obvious), Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Oregon aren’t mediocre programs. They’re top-eight-to-top-twelve national powerhouses in their own right. But when it comes to building a modern dynasty, Texas is simply better across the board, both in data and in the eyes of America’s best recruits. And for that positioning, much credit has to be given to Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian.
Unlike many peers, Steve Sarkisian avoids the social media spotlight, preferring results over trends. He’s not chasing viral videos or flashy headlines. He is dedicated to X’s and O’s, player development, and building sustainable success. That approach has elevated both recruiting and on-field performance.
Looking at recent college football dynasties, two factors have always made the difference: elite quarterback play and elite game management and scheming. Texas already boasts a superior tactical approach under Sarkisian. Now, with Arch Manning poised to take the reins and is poised to offer more than predecessor Quinn Ewers, Texas could finally see the quarterback leap that eluded them in previous crucial moments.
As training camp draws near, Texas fans have every reason to believe this is the year their program returns to the mountaintop. The present roster is loaded; the future is even brighter. While social media chatter may lag behind reality, the numbers and the nation’s top high school stars are flocking to Austin for one reason: Texas is the team to beat in 2025, and could be a fixture at the top for years to come.
Disclaimer: The content of this article was originally published as a YouTube video on the SMI College Football Show YouTube channel. With AI assistance, the publisher of the video created this article based on the content of that video.
