Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian calls $40M roster report 'irresponsible'
AUSTIN (KXAN) — How much will Texas spend on its football roster this season? Not as much as has been previously reported, head coach Steve Sarkisian said.
The spring meetings for the Southeastern Conference are happening in Destin, Florida. During an appearance on SiriusXM’s SEC Radio channel, Sarkisian refuted a report by the Houston Chronicle that the Longhorns plan to shell out “between $35-$40 million” in NIL compensation for the 2025 roster.
“What’s frustrating on that is that it was a little bit of irresponsible reporting,” he said. “One anonymous source said that’s what our roster was. I wish we had $40 million on our roster, we’d probably be a little bit better team than we are.”
The Chronicle’s report included the likely $20.5 million in revenue sharing from the House settlement, along with expected NIL contributions from the Texas One Fund, the school’s collective. It’s the new normal in the college football landscape to use money to build a roster, just not that much, Sarkisian said.
“The idea to think that other schools aren’t spending money to get players … it’s the state of college football. It is what it is,” Sarkisian said. “We’re fortunate, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got great support. Chris Del Conte, our athletic director, does a fantastic job. People are excited, and we’ve been to the CFP two years in a row and have had 20-something guys drafted the last two years. It has been a great run.”
He mentioned he’d like “another $15 million or so” to improve the roster, so by doing the math, perhaps the current bill for an elite-level FBS roster is in the $25 million range. Sarkisian didn’t go into specifics about his roster’s price tag beyond that comment.
Sarkisian was also annoyed because nobody had asked him about it before the report went public. He blamed social media and the news cycle for how quickly the report spread across the college sports landscape.
“The evolution of Twitter, social media and podcasts … One guy writes an article from an anonymous source that says that was our roster is, and everybody ran with it. I’m talking real publications ran with it … Nobody asked me one question. OK, sure, if that’s the narrative you want to paint about our team, that’s fine, whatever.”
‘Put a statue up somewhere of that team’
In a formal press conference with reporters, Sarkisian discussed the length of the season with the expanded College Football Playoff format, saying that he’d be shocked if someone ever went undefeated again.
“We played 16 games, and that was just to get to the semifinals,” he said. “The idea we have to wrap our brain around, I don’t know if we’ll ever see an undefeated national champion again. If we do, that’s a really good team. It’s difficult because of the quality of the opponents you play, but it’s also difficult to stay healthy that long. I think you’ll see teams, more and more now, with two, three, maybe even four losses get in.”
He compared it to Florida winning the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and Vanderbilt earning the top seed in the baseball tournament.
“I looked at Vanderbilt, and at one point of the season, they were 11-10, and now they are the No. 1 seed,” Sarkisian said. “We kind of saw it in basketball this year with Florida winning the national title. This idea that someone is going to 16-0 in college football, man, put a statue up somewhere of that team. I just don’t know that’s going to happen again.”
With potentially another CFP expansion to 16 teams as soon as 2026, Sarkisian’s only request is to make sure the teams that deserve to play for a national title get that opportunity.
“The idea that the powers that be are trying to get it right is a good, healthy discussion,” he said. “I understand that not everybody is on the same page right now. Hopefully, we can get to that point where we’re giving the best teams the opportunity to get in.”
