Texas is ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll heading into the Red River Rivalry for the first time since 1984. The last season where the Longhorns ascended to the top spot at any point was in 2008. Steve Sarkisian took over on the Forty Acres in January 2021. By October 2024, he built the best roster in college football. 

But how? 

Recruiting is never an issue at Texas. Even during the down years of Charlie Strong and Tom Herman, top tier talent flocked to Austin to play in burnt orange. But that talent wasn’t always developed. And many times, the talent was concentrated into the wrong positions. The Longhorns normally fielded strong 7-on-7 squads during the Strong and Herman years, but most of those teams lacked the quality beef required to beat the SEC powers. 

Sarkisian made it a point to build an SEC team at Texas. It wouldn’t happen overnight. He inherited a roster incapable of playing a typical spring game in 2021 because it lacked enough offensive linemen. His 2024 offensive line might be the current favorite to win the Joe Moore Award. 

The Longhorns rank seventh nationally in scoring offense and second in scoring defense. They are one of a handful of teams that have yet to trail in the 2024 season. The offensive line is elite, two quarterbacks can play at a Heisman level, the wide receiver and running back rooms are deep and filled with plus athletes. Defensively, Texas got faster in the secondary, more deadly in the pass rush, and replenished the defensive tackle room after losing an Outland Trophy winner and the first defensive player drafted last year. 

The scholarship limit is 85 (for now) but only 40 or so players contribute in real ways in a given season. We took the top 20 snap getters on the offensive and defensive side of the ball to see if we could find some trends.

We did.

The Top 40 on the roster are mostly 4- or 3-star players with 17 listed as 4-star recruits and 12 as three stars on their 247Sports Composite profile. Of the nine 5-star prospects in the Top 40, six play offense. And while the offense has twice as many five stars as the defense, the unit also has double the 3-star recruits with eight on offense compared to four on defense. Eleven of the top 20 snap getters on defense were 4-star players. 

Anthony Hill Jr., Alfred Collins, and Collin Simmons are the 5-star defenders. Two players - Moore and Michael Taaffe - were not rated coming out of high school. Three of Texas' five starting offensive linemen were 3-star prospects. Kelvin Banks (LT) and DJ Campbell (RG) were five-stars. In fact, over half (9 of 17) of the 3-star or below players in the Top 40 are offensive or defensive linemen. 

Lesson: Recruit talent at the skill positions. Develop talent in the trenches. Think Jake Majors and Keondre Coburn and T'Vondre Sweat and Hayden Conner. The Longhorns never stopped producing wide receivers and corners, but the well did run dry in the trenches. Assistant coaches such as Kyle Flood and Bo Davis led the Horns back to water. 

Eight of the Top 40 were transfers with four on each side of the ball. Three of the four on offense are wide receivers who arrived in the 2024 transfer class - the other is quarterback Quinn Ewers. On defense, the four transfers are spread across different positions with one edge (Trey Moore), one safety (Andrew Mukuba), one defensive tackle (Jermayne Lole) and one corner (Gavin Holmes).

Lesson: Fix specialty positions in the portal - wide receiver, secondary, instant help in pass rush. Develop the offensive and defensive lines through high school recruiting and let those recruits bake in the oven until they've developed into contributors. Sarkisian has used the transfer portal the way NFL teams use free agency. Likewise, he sees recruiting like the draft. 

Mack Brown won a national championship with a roster of Texans. Recruiting is more national than ever, even for programs in talent-rich areas such as Texas, but Sarkisian is still leaning on talent from the Lone Star State. Twenty-seven of Texas' Top 40 in snap count played high school football in the Great State. Of the 13 outsiders, four came through the transfer portal. Eight of the 13 came from Louisiana (4), California (2), or Florida (2). One each from Alabama, Hawaii, Colorado, Missouri, and Georgia are on the roster. 

Lesson: Don't let your borders become a prison, but there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Take the best from Texas and supplement with outside talent when required. 

The players receiving the most snaps are also spread across different classes. Five of the Top 40 on the roster are holdovers from the previoius staff, including offensive linemen Conner and Majors. Linebacker David Gbenda arrived in 2019. Six starters are from the 2021 class - Sark's first as head coach. Ten are from 2022, which was his first full cycle as head coach. Ten more are from 2023 and nine are from the 2024 cycle. This includes when the transfers arrived. 

The data suggests a hollistic approach to roster building. Texas didn't return to glory by simply populating the roster with five-star talent. It also didn't do it without that top-end talent at important positions such as quarterback, offensive tackle, and defensive end. Texas didn't do it by going all-in on the portal or by ignoring it, the Longhorns used a balanced approach that copies the way NFL organizations use the draft vs. free agency. They also didn't abandon Texas for outside talent or ignore that outside talent to say they took a Texan. 

Maybe there isn't a right way or a wrong way to build a roster in 2024, but other programs coud do worse than copying Sarkisian's blueprint in Austin.