On Texas Football: SEC move 'getting close,' spring depth chart, NSD2
In the latest edition of On Texas Football’s weekly State of the Program, Inside Texas’ Bobby Burton and Eric Nahlin get us caught up on happenings around Texas athletics, including the “second” national signing date, a look at the Longhorns’ football schedule for 2023 and news about the timeline for Texas’ move to the Southeastern Conference.
[Get Inside Texas Plus until the start of the 2023 season for $29.99!]
The former rush of news for the first Wednesday in February has been diminished with the advent of early signing day in December. There are already 14 players on campus from the group that signed then.
But Texas is still chasing unsigned players to fill the roster, most notably defensive back Warren Roberson out of Red Oak and Duce Robinson, considered the top tight end in the nation.
Nahlin said it’s unknown whether or not Robinson was going to sign in this period.
“You know, it’s 50/50 and there’s baseball considerations,” Nahlin said. “I think Texas is going stay on him and if there’s a decision to make a Texas hat is going to be involved.
“I don’t know how it’s ultimately going to play out. But I know that you know, if Sark really wants to run 12 personnel, and we know he does, then he needs a guy like Duce Robinson to really make it go. There’s really nobody that’s even a truly credible flex tight end on the roster right now.
“So I think Texas is going to stay in the game on this as long as it plays out. The question is, how long is it going to play out? We don’t know that.”
The Big 12 Conference composite football schedule was released on Tuesday. Burton said that its unveiling seems to show that the SEC is working behind the scenes with the Big 12 to allow Texas and Oklahoma to move to the SEC in 2024 rather than 2025.
“It sounds like the SEC announcement for 2024 and this is what I was ‘quote, unquote’ told was, getting close,” Burton said to Nahlin. “I know that falls in line to what you and I and others have been reporting at Inside Texas for quite some time. I was given a roundabout timeline of about a month or two. That that’s pretty big because, essentially, Texas is tied in to 2025.
“But we both have been hearing that there’s been, without using the term mediation, there’s been a mediation of sorts going on, in fact, in between the Big 12 The TV partners as well as Texas.”
Nahlin opined that the schedule came out in the Longhorns’ favor
“We had mentioned in advance that Texas wasn’t going to play Oklahoma State and West Virginia and that (proved true),” Nahlin said. “We knew that they were going to go to U of H. But you know, other than trading the two teams that were decimated by the portal, Texas still came out pretty good, better than I would have thought.”
You owe it to yourself to go check out the entire video, which also discusses Nahlin’s predictions for the Longhorns’ spring depth chart and some positions he’s keeping an eye on, some talk about the basketball team’s recent play and the future of the head coaching position and plenty of other great news.
