The Wild West And The Texas Longhorns

It’s been twenty years since the Texas Longhorns won a national championship. They have had several seasons of mediocrity since then. But not lately. The Horns are rolling. Their 2025 recruiting class is ranked consensus #1 in the country.

04 JAN 2006: Head Coach Mack Brown of the University of Texas celebrates the Longhorns victory over the University of Southern California during the BCS National Championship Game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA. Texas defeated USC 41-38 for the national title. Jamie Schwaberow/NCAA Photos via Getty Images

NCAA Photos via Getty Images

Where’s The Beef?

Just like the little old lady said in the now famous Wendy’s Hamburger commercial 40 years ago, some of us are saying: “Where’s the beef?” What gives? How did Texas land the #1 class. Sure, they’ve been to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff (CFP) the last two years. So what? They are not in the same class as Alabama with titles in 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018 and 2021? They are not on par with Ohio State with titles in 2014 and 2024. Their coach Steve Sarkisian is no Lou Saban? How did Texas leapfrog these juggernauts (and Georgia)?

Texas: The Sleeping Giant Awakens

The Athletic magazine (part of the New York Times) ranked Texas as the most valuable college sports franchise in the country with a projected value of $2.38 billion. This is irrelevant since college sports programs are not for sale (for now). This would however make the program equal in value to the price of the Carolina Panthers pro franchise in 2018 (just under $2.3 billion). The valuation was driven in large part by the bottom line: Revenue.

Over the last three years Texas football averaged $183 million a year in top line revenue including topping $200 million in 2024. No other university came within $25 million of Texas revenues the past two seasons.

Metric 1: Top-Tier Revenue And Longhorn Fundraising

Texas Athletics has demonstrated remarkable fundraising abilities. In the final year of the Big Twelve Longhorn Foundation donors, they set a new record by raising an astonishing $200 million in donations. During the 2023-24 school year, a record-breaking 24,996 Longhorn Foundation donors contributed almost $200 million in cash and pledges to Texas Athletics. This total surpassed any previous record set by the athletic department. $74.4 million of these donations were allocated to the Longhorn Foundation annual fund, marking the highest contribution since the Foundation’s inception in 1986.

Metric 2: Membership In The SEC (More Revenue)

The Texas Longhorn athletic department took in $331.9 million in revenue during the 2024 fiscal year while spending $327.8 for its 21 sports and 558 student athletes.

Texas topped the SEC conference in revenue. Texas spent over $65 million on football in Fiscal Year 2024, with almost $23 million of that going to coaching salaries. But that was more than balanced because the Texas football program took in $204.7 million in revenue. No other SEC teams (including Georgia and Alabama) topped $150 million in revenue.

Metric 3: The State Of Texas Is A High School Recruiting Hotbed

In January 2025 On3 Magazine did its annual ranking of the top 300 high school football players in America. 42 were from Texas.

The Lone Star State has for decades been a rich mine when it comes to football talent. The Dallas-Fort Worth area in particular has exploded in recent years, but never leave out Houston or parts of west Texas. Duncanville stars Keelon Russell (Alabama signee) and Dakorien Moore (Oregon) lead the way in this class, along with Texarkana Pleasant Grove‘s Lance Jackson (Texas), Lewisville‘s Michael Fasusi (Oklahoma) and Galveston Ball‘s Jonah Wiliams (Texas). In total, the state has eight of the 32 five-stars in the final On300 ranking and a whopping 18 top-100 prospects. And there sits the University of Texas in the middle of all that talent.

Metric 4: On-Field Success

As was noted already, Texas made it to the semifinals of the College Football Playoff the past two years and many services are ranking the Longhorns as the preseason #1 to win this season’s Playoff. But Texas has a long history of football success.

The Longhorns began playing football in 1893. Since then they have won many conference championships and claimed four national titles. Their first two national titles came under head coach Darrell Royal in the 1960s, where the Longhorns capped off undefeated seasons with wins at the Cotton Bowl in 1963 and 1969. The Longhorns also claimed the 1970 national championship, though the honor is split between Texas, Ohio State and Nebraska. All three schools ended the regular season undefeated, but both Texas and Ohio State wound up losing their bowl games, giving the Cornhuskers national championship honors according to the AP vote.

The Longhorns’ most recent championship came in the BCS era, when coach Mack Brown and quarterback Vince Young led Texas to an epic 41–38 win over Pete Carroll, Matt Leinart and the USC Trojans at the 2006 Rose Bowl in what became an instant college classic.

Texas may not be Alabama but football has been and remains a big deal at the university and within the state.

Texas Has The Will…And The Resources

So the bottom line is this: As universities in general go, Texas has for many years already been one of the wealthiest institutions in America. That did not matter as much in the old days when teams had scholarship limits and they could not pay players. No longer. In the new wild west of College Football 2025 Longhorn coaches and their general manager are using all the riches of the school to keep more of the best talent in Texas at home and reach across the country to grab five-star talent like linebacker Tyler Atkinson from the state of Georgia.

It is clear then that in this new era of the wild west in college football where there are few rules, Texas is maybe the biggest winner. To all UT alums I can only say “Hook ‘em Horns!”