What does it mean for Texas to have an NFL roster strategy?

While the overall transfer class proved to be very strong, some of Texas’ moves in the transfer portal over the last window have drawn confusion and frustration from Longhorn fans. Not only the players that were added but also some of the players who were allowed to leave created those emotions.

All of the confusing moves by Texas in the transfer portal are largely explained by the Longhorns pivoting away from a typical blue blood college program roster strategy toward a NFL-style roster strategy.

In the NFL, teams have to operate within a salary cap system where proven veterans can command big salaries and take larger chunks while back-ups make minimums and younger players have their compensation capped by rookie-scale contracts. NFL franchises also get a limited number of draft picks every year to use in stockpiling prized young prospects on rookie-scale deals. It’s not a 1-to-1 to how modern college football rosters work, but the addition of NIL and the transfer portal have created limitations on old fashioned talent hoarding and made the two games closer.

New styles of roster-building are emerging as a result that take from the NFL.

Breakdown of the old model

It used to be that a blue blood school like Texas could hoard blue chip players across the roster.

At the top, your starters were the best players on the team who had developed winning skill or were simply too talented and impactful not to play. That obviously remains the case today, although for many schools it has become very difficult to keep all of the stars, much like for NFL teams dealing with the salary cap.

Traditionally your second, third, and even fourth string players were mostly comprised of younger recruits who either hadn’t yet put together all of the winning skills and techniques or were capped by talent or ability below the level of a starter. Many back-up slots weren’t back-ups in the NFL sense of being mostly less talented but reliable cogs in the machine, they were players you were developing to serve as tomorrow’s stars.

All players used to be considerably cheaper. NIL and revenue sharing made player payments common and above board, which increased the payouts. The transfer portal has been perhaps even a bigger killer of price controls because it allows players to routinely test their market value. Players can see their value go through the roof in just a year and with limited available seasons to maximize their earnings (and many agents keenly aware) the potential for player movement is massive.

Now that those forces are in effect it’s simply no longer possible to hoard 4/5-star prospects to the same degree as in the past. Schools like Texas don’t operate under a salary cap with the same funding limitations as other schools but there are certainly upper limits to how much money the program can raise to use in paying a roster.

A 4-star junior or senior who never quite mastered his craft well enough to start at Texas is unlikely to stick around as a depth piece for a cheap price when he could go be a starter elsewhere for more money. Nor is the 4-star freshman or sophomore going to be willing to sit and wait forever for their turn to shine and produce in a way that will increase their compensation. Not when other programs will pay them in advance anticipating the production will come if there is more room in the lineup. On the other side of the ledger, neither is Texas wanting to wait around for multiple years before a blue chip high schooler who took real money to commit starts to actually produce at a level commensurate with the financial commitment.

The upshot is that it isn’t cost effective to do two things at the same time.

• Pay the best players available to fill out your starting lineup with winning talents.
• Also pay for a 2nd/3rd string with comparable talent to your starters but at varying levels of development.

Enter the NFL-lite model.

The NFL/college hybrid model of roster management

You can summarize the new model with the three following portal moves by Texas.

1. The Longhorns paid top dollar to secure the commitment of receiver Cam Coleman, who was perhaps the most coveted available receiver in college football.
2. Texas lost talented and promising young linebacker Elijah Barnes, despite needing depth and talent at linebacker, to a better offer from Kentucky.
3. The Longhorns brought in Markus Boswell from Akron, whose most likely projection is as a multi-year back-up linebacker.

What’s the through line for all of these moves? Texas is paying market prices based on expected production in a given year and saving capital for proven, impact players. If Boswell ends up developing into a starter-caliber player, his compensation will likely reflect as much in the future, but for now this is what it looks like to get for a young back-up linebacker at market price. He’s being paid to fill the role of Barnes as a back-up, not Barnes as a potential future star.

The Coleman example also makes the point very poignantly. The Longhorns allowed “good, not great” receivers DeAndre Moore and Parker Livingstone to leave in order to make sure they were spending money on an elite talent at the essential position of wide receiver. You can find similar decisions up and down the roster where Texas moved a ton of money around.

When star players depart, they’ll more routinely be replaced in this model with young blue chips or imported transfers while the back-ups remain back-ups. Boswell may never be a starter for the Longhorns, just a longtime back-up who ensures the team has enough numbers to get good practices in. Unless he proves to be surprisingly talented, future holes at starting linebacker will also be filled with transfers or blue chip youngsters while he maintains a role as a back-up or leaves for another opportunity and is replaced by another back-up level player.

This is a very different paradigm than what we have all been accustomed to following over decades of the sport’s history, but it’s the way the winds appear to be blowing currently. There will be countless ramifications downstream of this that will alter how many teams build rosters as programs slowly adapt to the new realities. Front office quality may become the key advantage in the future.