University of Texas alum Gerald Goodridge was living in Oklahoma City in 2010 when disaster struck.
During the undefeated Longhorns’ national title game against the University of Alabama, Texas quarterback Colt McCoy went down with an injury in the first quarter and never returned. It was a bad omen for the future. Texas lost the game, and a long, painful stretch of mediocrity began.
“Things just seemingly spun out of control,” recalled Goodridge, who returned to the Lone Star State last year and hosts “The Longhorn Republic” podcast. Goodridge prides himself on being a UT graduate, even during all those years when the team wasn’t that good: “I’ve never been a fairweather fan and proudly wore my Texas gear behind enemy lines, even when the on-field production was terrible.”
But the dog days might be over. After years of meh, UT football is back to being good. Really good.
Last season, the Longhorns made the College Football Playoff as the No. 3 team in the country, and, while they ultimately lost to the second-ranked Washington Huskies, they’re projected as a top five program going into this season, their first in the powerhouse Southeastern Conference. Texas’ move, along with the University of Oklahoma, to the SEC was seismic; not only did the two preeminent programs in the Big 12 Conference leave, they’re entering the strongest conference in college football — winner of six of the last 10 championships.
So while Texas’ new conference is tougher, the team is better, too. Returning Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers is a favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. And demand for tickets to a home game in Austin is so large that the prices are among the highest in the country, nearly $350 per ticket.
“Texas looks to be one of the best teams in the nation in 2024,” wrote Sports Illustrated’s Evan Vieth.
Of course, reports of Texas’ return to football greatness are not exactly new.
After Texas won the Sugar Bowl in 2019, beating No. 5 Georgia, quarterback Sam Ehlinger declared “We’re back!” which delighted fans in the moment but quickly became a meme after the team floundered
So, while we’ve heard this song before, it’s undeniable that Texas football is on an upward trajectory. And it’s a perfect time to be a rich college football program (even more than usual). Texas’ athletic department is loaded, reporting a whopping $271 million in revenue last year, the highest among all NCAA schools. The vast majority of that revenue, $183 million, came from football.
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We are living in a brand-new, unprecedented era in which college athletes can receive money from donors in the form of name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals. Previously, paying college athletes was officially forbidden, though it still regularly happened under the table, and schools were constantly being sanctioned for violating the rules. Most famously, Southern Methodist University’s football program received the so-called “death penalty” for repeated infractions in 1987.
In recent years, the college football landscape has done a 180, thanks to court challenges to the old system. In 2021, the Supreme Court sided with athletes and ruled that the NCAA was violating antitrust laws by placing limits on education-related benefits schools can provide athletes. That ushered in new state laws and NCAA rule changes, which gave athletes new opportunities to make money. Now, according to the NCAA, athletes can benefit from NIL by endorsing products, signing sponsorship deals, engaging in commercial opportunities, and monetizing their social media presence, among other revenue streams. It’s important to note that money doesn’t come from schools directly but instead through collectives of supporters.
New transfer portal rules also allow players to switch immediately to another school, rather than having to sit out a year, as they were required to do in the past.
Wealthy schools like Texas have benefitted hugely from these recent updates. Last year, a tax-exempt charity established by Longhorns fans set out to recruit top offensive linemen, paying them each a salary of $50,000 a year.
And it really worked.
Texas went from a 5-7 football season in 2021 to, three years later, being a top-ranked team. The New York Times last year nodded at Texas’ Scrooge McDuck-like wealth, calling the program one of the “best teams that money can buy.”
But Texas is hardly the only school to benefit from such changes, and those who follow the team say that that’s only part of the reason for Texas’ recent success.
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“It would be foolish to say that NIL and the transfer portal haven’t helped Texas succeed in this era,” said Austin American-Statesman writer Danny Davis. “But that just gets the players in the door (or keeps them here).”
Davis also credits fourth year coach Steve Sarkisian for the turnaround.
“In the end, Texas has been able to make strides because Steve Sarkisian is a good coach who has surrounded himself with good coaches — and they are coaching very talented players,” Davis said. He noted that Texas had 11 players taken in this year’s NFL draft.
Goodridge said the money makes it easier for big schools to attract top players, but keeping them is the real challenge.
“It’s one thing to be able to competitively compensate players to make Austin an appealing place for them to be,” he said. “But in the era of the transfer portal, you have to be able to keep them in Austin as well, which has a lot to do with culture.”
He pointed to Texas A&M football’s recent woes; in 2023, the school fired highly touted football coach Jimbo Fisher after years of mediocre seasons. Fisher’s firing was so expensive, the school could have kept him and instead used that $77 million to fund 1,666 full-tuition scholarships — or bought 17 billion Goldfish crackers, Dan Solomon wrote at the time for Texas Monthly.
Goodridge pointed out that A&M “had a ton of NIL money dedicated to attracting a record recruiting class, but they couldn’t make the talent work together well, and now Jimbo is out and some of that elite talent has transferred out.”
So is Texas really “back?” Goodridge and others who follow the team are still cautious.
“I need to see this year before Texas can say it’s fully back,” he said. “Because for me, it’s not about one year, but about multiple years of sustained success.”
