Despite the first kick of the 2024 football season still being over 70 days away, head coach Steve Sarkisian and the rest of Texas football are in the busiest, and most important, stages of the year.
Elite college football teams are built off the back of recruiting. Teams like Alabama and Georgia have dominated the last 10 years of football and always find themselves at the top of the recruiting rankings. Sarkisian, a former Alabama offensive coordinator, has brought the recruiting excellence from Tuscaloosa to Austin and plans to put it on display in June.
Recruiting works on a calendar-based system that aims to prevent tampering and misconduct. Throughout the year, colleges go through four different time periods of recruiting. The dead period is when in-person contact with high school recruits is not allowed. Second is the contact and evaluation period, where in-person contact and travel to the recruits’ homes and schools are permitted, and is the time when most of the coaches do their traveling. Lastly is the quiet period, arguably the most important time, when players are allowed to visit the colleges with their families and schools can make final impressions.
College football is wrapping up its quiet period in a week, which will start the next wave of important recruiting decisions for the class of 2025. Texas, of course, has been active and is on the precipice of making major breakthroughs for their next class of future Longhorns.
The Longhorns have been quiet for the class of 2025 in the early part of the year, mostly focusing on a college football playoff berth and the transfer portal, but the No. 16 class in the nation looks to jump into the top five as soon as the end of July.
Texas hosted 16 players last weekend, with one name standing above the rest. Dakorien Moore, the No. 5 player in the nation and No. 1 wide receiver according to 247Sports, has his eyes on Texas. Moore was joined by four other top-100 recruits in Austin, but 18 more players will grace the Forty Acres this upcoming weekend.
“Texas knocked this out of the park,” Justin Wells, a senior recruiting analyst for Inside Texas, told On3 about Moore. “I think Texas has had a commanding lead in this recruitment for the longest. … Texas did everything they possibly could to assure Dakorien Moore that he is more than welcome on the Forty Acres.”
It’s safe to say that a good impression over the next two weeks will be key to the future of the Longhorns program. Even if Moore isn’t to commit to Texas, the Longhorns will host two more five-star wide receivers and another five-star offensive tackle on Friday.
It can be hard to keep up with the ever-changing flow of one of the most complicated processes in college sports. Sarkisian and the rest of the Texas staff are working to secure the future of the Longhorns and don’t plan to be outside of the top-10 recruiting rankings by the first week of the 2024 season.
