Entering ESD and the winter portal window with games remaining, Texas has ‘champagne problems’

AUSTIN, Texas — It’s game week for the No. 2 Texas Longhorns as head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff prepare for a rematch with the No. 5 Georgia Bulldogs in the SEC Championship game.

It’s also hours before the early signing period opens on Wednesday, which will look different than it ever has before — recruits are signing earlier than ever this year with Early Signing Day previously taking place on the third Wednesday in December since its inception in 2017, and there are no more National Letters of Intent that bind recruits to schools, replaced by financial aid agreements that require schools to provide scholarship money to signees.

After the early signing period closes on Friday, the winter window for the NCAA transfer portal opens on Monday and remains open until

With Texas locked into a College Football Playoffs berth regardless of the outcome in Atlanta on Saturday, that means that Sarkisian and his staff have to juggle preparation for Georgia and for the playoffs with recruiting and roster management through the portal, difficulties posed by the changing college football calendar and the program’s burgeoning success under Sarkisian, creating what the Texas head coach termed “crying from a yacht” and “champagne problems” during his Monday press conference.

“I’d much rather be playing Saturday than watching teams play Saturday. So we’re fortunate to be playing Saturday, but on that note, there’s a lot of staffs around the country that all they’re doing is they’re working the phones now between now and Wednesday morning to get guys signed. We’ve got to find the right balance as we’re game planning, prepping, meeting with our players, practice, walk throughs, we still have to find those times to recruit,” Sarkisian said.

With multiple targets set to announce on Wednesday, Texas has already had a notable week in recruiting, flipping consensus four-star cornerback Kade Phillips back from LSU on Tuesday, hours after losing consensus three-star offensive lineman John Mills to Washington and consensus four-star defensive lineman Joseph Mbatchou back to Florida.

“I think that we’ve tried to build quality relationships with the recruits that we are recruiting so that they understand, hey, when you come to the University of Texas, get used to playing in championship games, get used to preparing for the College Football Playoffs,” Sarkisian said.

“Because of that, maybe we can’t sit on the phone with you for two hours and babysit you. We’re going to check in and make sure you’re in a good spot, but knowing that the reason for that is because we’re preparing to go compete for a championship Saturday and the CFP. Not everybody can say that, and fortunately we’re one of the few that can.”

The 2025 recruiting class for the Horns currently holds 23 verbal commitments heading into the early signing period and ranks No. 4 nationally in the 247Sports Composite rankings. The addition of Phillips helps solidify an elite secondary class that started slowly before making landing some late pledges, leaving the defensive line and linebacker as the positions of major remaining need with outstanding targets at both positions, including the nation’s No. 10 prospect, defensive lineman Justus Terry, and consensus four-star Florida linebacker Kellen Wiley.

Managing the transfer portal is arguably more difficult — the staff needs to have some idea of who is going to depart via the portal or forgo remaining eligibility to declare for the 2025 NFL Draft to determine what needs exist that additions through the portal will have to address. Potential draft declarations are particularly difficult to assess at this time because those players haven’t yet received feedback from the NFL Draft advisory committee, the type of feedback that was critical in cornerback Jahdae Barron’s decision to return to school a year ago.

“Again, it’s just time management. it’s balancing what we have to do on a daily basis. It’s having the relationships with our current players so that they can be upfront and honest with us, but also monitoring the portal as it comes we’re going to have some needs that we’re going to need to fill again,” Sarkisian said.

“We don’t want to live in the portal — we think we’ve got a great recruiting class coming in, we’ve got a lot of really young, talented players on a roster that are steadily improving, but I’m sure we’re going to have a couple voids where we’re going to have some depth issues that maybe we can fill in the portal.”

Texas ended up taking 12 transfers from the portal last offseason, the largest transfer group of Sarkisian’s tenure on the Forty Acres by a significant margin, surpassing the seven transfer added in 2022. It’s unlikely the Longhorns will need to take that many transfers again this cycle, but there are needs at wide receiver, tight end, and defensive tackle along with possible needs at every other position beyond quarterback.

Georgia transfer cornerback Julian Humphrey is already reportedly considering Texas.

“We try to recruit high school kids because we develop relationships with them over time. We understand there is some advantage to the portal from a free-agency standpoint to stopgap some of the depth issues we might have on our roster, but we probably don’t spend as much time on the portal as a lot of other schools do because of our commitment to the high school recruiting,” Sarkisian said.

Figuring out how to get a fourth-straight top-five recruiting class signed while preparing for a conference championship game, though?

That’s definitely a champagne problem.

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