College football’s 2026 offseason has run through the state of Texas.
Part of that is due to the whirlwind of news coming out of Lubbock. But much of it is due to the hype resonating from Austin and College Station. The Aggies have the No. 1 recruiting class in 2027. The Longhorns sit at No. 4. Together, they account for five of the 32 five-star recruits and 20 of the top 100.
Sometimes they’re recruiting against each other — like in the case of five-star Texas CB commit John Meredith — but often they’re winning heavyweight battles against national powers. The Aggies have snagged top 40 recruits from Florida, Georgia and Maryland. Texas’ top 100s span from California to Illinois.
It’s a dominant offseason push from a pair of programs that have pushed to the forefront of the sport.
Texas A&M reached the 2025 College Football Playoff.
Texas participated in the 2023 and 2024 iterations.
It’s a unique period for Texas’ pair of flagship schools. Despite the history of both programs, there have been very few times in recent memory when the Aggies and Longhorns have succeeded concurrently.
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Texas and Texas A&M both won 10 games last season. It’s the first time since 1975 that’s happened in the same year. Both have won at least 19 games over the last two seasons. That hasn’t happened back-to-back years for both programs since 1994 and 1995.
There’s never been a three-year period in recent college football history where the Aggies and Longhorns were national contenders at the same time.
That’s changed heading into 2026 SEC Media Days.
Whenever the preseason AP poll comes out, Texas and Texas A&M will likely be ranked in the top 10. They’re both led by star quarterbacks. They both have potential top draft picks scattered across their rosters.
For decades, Texas and Texas A&M competed for the same recruits in the same Lone Star State-sized talent pool. In 2026, college football is a national sport, and the two programs are big enough (and rich enough) to both sit near the top of the sport at the same time.
What’s changed for Texas A&M
Despite spending millions on a Kyle Field renovation, hiring a former national championship-winning head coach, and placing a very bold plaque foretelling Jimbo Fisher’s future national title, Texas A&M never truly capitalized on Johnny Manziel’s magical 2012 run.
The Aggies won 11 games that year, their first in the SEC.
They wouldn’t hit double-digit wins again until 2025.
It’s not like Texas A&M didn’t come close. Fisher had the Aggies on the cusp of the playoff in 2020 with a 9-1 record. Kevin Sumlin never had a losing season in College Station. But given the investment the Aggies were making in football — including a record-setting contract for Fisher and, later, a record-setting buyout — they weren’t ascending to where they wished to go.
Mike Elko’s changed that.
A former Texas A&M defensive coordinator under Fisher, Elko was a reasonably under-the-radar hire from Duke. He inherited a roster defined by turnover in 2024. Texas A&M had to sign 28 transfers. The Aggies largely hit on them. Four of them would go on to be draft picks. Flash forward to the 2025 transfer class, a 14-player group, and the Aggies produced three more draft picks — with another coming whenever Mario Craver is selected.
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Elko’s defenses have been good since he returned. But arguably the biggest difference for the Aggies was a consistently explosive offense.
The Aggies finished 25th nationally in scrimmage plays of 20-plus yards last season. They’d only finished in the top 40 once in the previous five campaigns. Fisher’s offenses were beguiled by a complex playbook and an inability to adapt to modern trends. Elko’s first two teams, led by OC Collin Klein, were more successful but failed to create big plays.
Last year, thanks to added speed at receiver via Craver and KC Concepcion, A&M emerged as a dynamic offensive attack.
“I think last year, for the first time in a long time, Texas A&M brought back some of that explosiveness on the offensive side of the ball,” Elko said Monday at the Texas High School Coaches Association Convention.
Entering 2026, the Aggies have a third-year starter at quarterback (Marcel Reed), dangerous weapons at receiver (Craver, Ashton Bethel-Roman), one of the most experienced secondaries in the country and spent big on the offensive line to reinforce a unit that lost four starters.
Throw in the booms from back-to-back top 10 recruiting classes, and the Aggies are beginning to build as an elite team would annually. That’s something, looking back, Elko credits to the Aggies breaking away to the SEC 15 years ago.
“That’s what’s allowed us the opportunity to grow our brand and recruit at a level that allows us to compete year in and year out and be successful,” Elko said. “I think we’ve done a really, really good job as a university in the athletic program, trying to elevate our brand and what that brand means across the country. I think that’s what’s allowed us to get into the positions that we’re in.”
The Texas championship window
Steve Sarkisian is an established presence in Austin. He pulled Texas out of its dark period. The Longhorns have won 10 games for three straight seasons for the first time since 2007-09.
There is no doubt about what Texas is entering Year 6 under Sarkisian. The question is whether the Longhorns can capitalize on their championship window.
One could argue that Texas has the best roster in college football.
Those around Austin believe the Longhorns could have as many as six first-round picks, and they’re spread across the roster.
Arch Manning enters the 2026 season as a preseason Heisman favorite. He had his ups and downs a season ago, but he ended the year as an unquestioned top-20 passer in the sport by every advanced metric. The good news for Manning is that every position around him on offense projects to be improved.
The offensive line let Texas down last season, ranking 97th in pressure rate allowed. The Longhorns responded by adding a pair of transfer offensive linemen, including Melvin Siani, the No. 6 offensive tackle in the 247Sports portal rankings. The Longhorns offensive line enters 2026 with 5,806 career snaps. That group includes projected first-round left tackle Trevor Goosby.
Texas failed to produce a 600-yard rusher last season, and the team averaged just 4.3 yards per carry. The Longhorns responded by adding two of the top six backs in the portal — No. 3 Hollywood Smothers and No. 6 Raleek Brown. Then there’s the wide receivers. Texas ranked 80th nationally in drop rate. It responded by overhauling an unproven room and adding Cam Coleman, who is safely considered by NFL scouts to be the second or third-best receiver prospect in the 2027 class behind Jeremiah Smith.
Texas spared no expense on defense, too.
Sarkisian made an all-in move by firing defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski, who had just produced a top-25 defense, and hiring Will Muschamp. It’s the return of Coach Boom in Austin, and he’s got plenty of pieces to work with.
Texas returns six starters on defense, and there’s a potential first-rounder on every level.
Edge Colin Simmons might be the best defensive player in the sport, coming off a 12-sack season. Jelani McDonald has a first-round ceiling at safety, and Pittsburgh transfer Rasheem Biles projects among the best linebackers in the country.
The Longhorns will easily have one of the most expensive rosters in the sport. They went all-in for what will likely be Manning’s final season in Austin. The expectation is a deep run in the playoff. Anything less would be a disappointment.
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How the rivals reached the top together
Texas and Texas A&M have always recruited good players. Since Texas A&M moved to the SEC, both have usually produced top-10 to top-15 recruiting classes annually. The talent, at least on paper, has always been there.
So why is there a sudden surge from both Lone Star Showdown rivals?
It helps that Texas and Texas A&M hired the right coaches. Texas went through a tough stretch in the 2010s, with Mack Brown on the back end of his career, Charlie Strong struggling to pick up the pieces, and Tom Herman failing to rally the entire university around his program. Texas A&M struggled, too, with Kevin Sumlin failing to break through annually and with the unpredictability and lack of discipline that defined the second half of Fisher’s tenure.
Both have found stability in the athletic director’s office. Chris Del Conte has transformed Texas into a national powerhouse in almost every major sport, picking up the pieces from the Steve Patterson regime in the post-DeLoss Dodds power vacuum. Texas A&M, for its part, found its footing under Ross Bjork and later Trev Alberts, even if the unpredictability of the booster classes at both schools reared up a bit during the Aggies’ 2023 coaching search, rallying against Mark Stoops before the Aggies turned to Elko.
Mostly, however, the two programs are beneficiaries of the current environment of the sport.
Twenty years ago, the Aggies and Longhorns were both Texas-based recruiters. The Longhorns’ 2005 title team had just 13 out-of-state players on its roster. Texas A&M’s roster had only eight.
But recruiting and the sport itself are much more national in 2026. It allows Texas and Texas A&M to recruit outside the state’s borders. For example, the Longhorns signed 11 out-of-state players in 2026, and the Aggies inked 17.
Then there’s the thing that looms above every college football roster conversation in 2026 — money.
There’s little doubt Texas and Texas A&M are among the biggest spenders in the sport. Both of their 2026 rosters will easily clear $30 million. Brands matter. Coaches matter. But neither program would be in quite the position of contention they are in 2026 without significant investment.
One thing feels certain (in a way it never did two decades ago) when Texas travels to College Station on Nov. 27, that game will have stakes. It had CFP and SEC implications the last two seasons, and it will assuredly be a factor once again in 2026.
For decades, the Lone Star Showdown was built on history and a mutual distaste between the programs. In 2026, it’s built on something much more consequential: Two championship contenders meeting in the final week of the regular season.
Based on the way both programs are recruiting — and spending — the Longhorns and Aggies being good at the same time may become the new normal.
