Steve Sarkisian Says Texas Had to Cut Players to Create NIL “Cap Space”

Steve Sarkisian pulled back the curtain on how Texas is running its football roster these days, and what he said out loud would’ve gotten a man run out of every booster club in the state ten years ago.

Speaking on Paul Finebaum’s show, the Longhorns head coach said the program had to let multiple players go — naming them by name — to free up what he called “cap space” for incoming transfers. The quote was shared by On3.

“To make the moves we make, to bring in a Cam Coleman, to bring in a Hollywood Smothers, to bring in a Raleek Brown, to bring in a Mike Masunas at tight end; we had to let DeAndre Moore go. We had to let Parker Livingstone go. We had to let Tre Wisner go. We had to let CJ Baxter go,” Sarkisian said.

Then came the part that would’ve made Bear Bryant spit out his coffee.

“We had to let some pretty good players leave to create the cap space to bring those guys in. I think strategically, there were some tough decisions to make. But, we made them. I think we all can agree that we’re probably better around Arch today than we were a year ago at this time.”

“Arch” is Arch Manning, the junior quarterback carrying the weight of every expectation in Austin on his shoulders. Sarkisian’s argument is straightforward: the roster around Manning is better now than it was a year ago, and the way it got better was by swapping out players the program had recruited and developed for players it bought on the open market.

The names tell the story. Coleman, a wide receiver who transferred from Auburn, and Smothers, a running back who came from Oklahoma, are the headliners of the incoming class. Brown arrived from USC. Masunas, a tight end, rounds out the group. On the outgoing side, Moore and Livingstone were wide receivers, Wisner a running back, and Baxter a running back who dealt with injuries during his Texas tenure.

Sarkisian didn’t hedge. He didn’t talk around it. He used the phrase “cap space” — a salary-cap term from professional sports — to describe managing a college roster’s NIL budget. There is no salary cap in college football. There is no collective bargaining agreement. What there is, as of now, is a pool of money from boosters and collectives that programs use to pay players for their name, image, and likeness, and coaches who have to decide who gets paid and who gets shown the door.

The reaction was immediate. Fans on social media called it a terrible recruiting pitch — telling a four-star kid you’ll cut him the minute someone better becomes available — and a sign that loyalty has been fully priced out of the sport. Others argued Sarkisian was simply saying what every major program does quietly, and that his honesty, however uncomfortable, was refreshing.

Both things can be true. The sport has always been ruthless. Coaches have always run off players who didn’t pan out, told them their scholarship wasn’t being renewed, nudged them toward the transfer portal with a gentle hand on the back. What’s changed is the vocabulary. Sarkisian talked about it like a general manager managing a payroll, because that’s closer to what the job is now than it’s ever been.

Texas went 13-3 last season and reached the College Football Playoff semifinals before losing to Ohio State. Manning is back. The roster has been retooled. And the coach just told everyone exactly how the sausage gets made.