Urban Meyer: 'It's hard to say Texas doesn't have the best roster in college football'

One of the great parts about On3 is that it offers Inside Texas subscribers access to the best coverage of Texas Longhorns football and recruiting plus similar content from sites covering other name-brand teams around the country.

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A good example is Tim May, who provides insight on the Ohio State Buckeyes over at Lettermen Row. May is a veteran of the Ohio State beat, and hosts a regular show with former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer on the On3 YouTube channel.

Longhorn fans likely have a lot of thoughts on Meyer, especially after Texas pursued the free-agent coach in 2020 near the end of Tom Herman‘s tenure. Meyer didn’t take over for Herman, instead venturing to Jacksonville for a short stint as head coach of the Jaguars.

Texas and Meyer waged several high profile recruiting wars during the three-time national champion head coach’s tenure in Columbus, Ohio, including for players like Baron Browning and Anthony Cook.

But on the most recent edition of Urban’s Take with Tim May during the course of a discussion about the Ohio State, Georgia, Alabama quarterback competitions, Meyer took a moment to offer high praise to the Longhorns.

“I think Texas, you didn’t mention them, but don’t sleep on Texas this year,” Meyer said. “I was talking to Mark Pantoni and I was talking to the recruiting director at Ohio State. Man for man, roster against roster, it’s hard to say Texas doesn’t have the best roster in college football.

“Now, they’ve got to play. It’s been a while since Texas has been good or elite. But their quarterback, I watched him live against Alabama before he got hurt. They could have won that game. We all know Quinn Ewers from when he was at Ohio State. I think Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas are in pretty good shape.”

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Meyer, who works as a college football analyst for Fox, was in Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium last year for the network’s coverage of the Longhorns’ battle with Alabama. He had a first-hand look at Texas then and on other occasions when Fox featured the Horns in one of its telecasts.

Meyer’s opinions on Texas in the past haven’t always had positive slants to them. More often than not, he criticized what was taking place in Austin, though his words weren’t very different from those many other media outlets offered about the Longhorns’ struggles.

Ahead of 2023, Meyer placed Texas within some elite company thanks to the recruiting efforts from head coach Steve Sarkisian and staff and levied his own high expectations upon the Horns in their year in the Big 12.