The 2024 college football season presents an entirely new landscape. Texas is in the SEC. SMU is back in a power conference as ACC members. The College Football Playoff now includes 12 teams and an automatic bid for the best G5 team in the land. For most, the start of the season is in Week 1 on August 30, though SMU starts in Week 0 and TCU plays its first game on Aug. 29. 

To celebrate us making it through another off-season, we’re counting down the 50 most important players in Texas as we inch closer to kickoffs. This list isn’t necessarily about which players are the best in terms of NFL draft stock. It ranks players in order of importance to their team's success. 

NO. 7: TCU QB Josh Hoover

The History: Josh Hoover’s first start against BYU was a debut on par with when the Jackson 5 dropped ‘I Want You Back.’ The redshirt freshman from Rockwall-Heath threw for 439 yards and four touchdowns in a 44-11 win, earning Big 12 Co-Offensive Player of the Week. While he took some predictable lumps in the ensuing three games, Hoover finished the last two weeks with 756 yards and a 6-to-1 TD:INT ratio, taking a stranglehold on TCU’s starting quarterback job.

The Skillset: TCU head coach Sonny Dykes has repeatedly said this offseason that the 2023 Horned Frogs were an atrocious situational football team. TCU was 121st in the nation in red zone offense. The hope is that Hoover’s skillset is a better fit at quarterback with Kendal Briles’s RPO scheme. Not only is Hoover a sound decision maker, but he can let it rip on deep routes.

“He can make some throws that very few guys that I’ve ever worked with could make,” Dykes said at THSCA Coaching School. “I don’t think people know that yet about him.”

The Impact: Whether it be a college, high school or Dykes’s seven-year-old team, the offense only operates as well as the quarterback plays. Hoover proved last year he could spin it, but even more important was the way he won the locker room over by season’s end. TCU’s leadership faltered from the 2022 national championship run to the 2023 5–7 finish. It’s up to Hoover to bring the edge back.

“When that guy walks in the room and everyone has his back and believes in him and cares about him, that sets a good starting point,” Dykes said at Big 12 Media Days. “Josh certainly has that.”