When Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian interviewed with athletics director Chris Del Conte to replace Tom Herman, he’d already identified one of the program’s biggest issues.
“We need bigger humans in our program,” Sarkisian recounted last summer. “And we need more of them.”
Entering Sarkisian’s first spring, the Longhorns had a serious roster imbalance — the wide receiver room featured 12 players on campus (and two more signees), but Texas had only 11 offensive lineman after signing just two recruits in the 2021 class, including one early enrollee.
It wasn’t just a long-term problem with serious implications for what would become the program’s eventual move to the SEC, a decision still months in the making.