Texas Has Built Around Arch Manning. The 2026 Spring Portal Closure Exposed Their Only Real Weakness
Texas spent the entire offseason building the right supporting cast around Arch Manning. The 2026 portal closure exposed the one position where they did not finish the job.
The Longhorns went all-in this winter and spring on giving Manning everything a Heisman contender needs. They restocked the wide receiver room with experienced transfers. They added depth at running back. They reinforced the secondary. By every reasonable measure, Steve Sarkisian’s roster is positioned to compete for a national championship in Manning’s first full year as the starter.
Then spring practice happened, and one weakness refused to go away. Depth at center is shaky, and the spring transfer portal window is gone for 2026, so the Longhorns cannot just buy their way out of the problem the way they have in past offseasons.
The elimination of the spring transfer portal window was supposed to deter post-spring tampering across college football. Coaches mostly supported the move. The thinking was that one window for transfers in the winter would force programs to commit to their rosters earlier and reduce the constant churn. The unintended consequence is what teams like Texas are now experiencing. Whatever holes show up in spring practice cannot be patched through the portal anymore. Whatever you have on June 1 is what you have to start the season.
For the Longhorns, the hole at center is the kind of problem that might not seem like much in the abstract but matters enormously in the SEC. Manning is going to take a lot of hits this fall. Texas plays Georgia, Texas A&M, Tennessee, Mississippi State, and a brutal road schedule. The interior of the offensive line is the difference between a quarterback making throws comfortably and a quarterback running for his life. A center who can read defenses, communicate protections and anchor against SEC defensive tackles is non-negotiable.
Sarkisian is going to try to develop the answer from within. There are options on the roster, but none of them have meaningful starting experience at the position. Spring practice did not produce a clear front-runner, which is part of why the staff has been so vocal about needing players to step up before fall camp.
Other Power conference programs are dealing with similar problems for different reasons. Clemson did not address its offensive line up front in the winter portal and has four new starters to break in along the line. Iowa State suffered a major blow when projected starter Braden Awls tore his ACL in spring practice. Without a second transfer window, the Cyclones cannot just bring in an experienced replacement. They have to develop internally.
The portal-window change is going to reward programs that have built strong roster pipelines and punish programs that have leaned heavily on transfer reinforcements. Texas falls somewhere in the middle. The Longhorns have recruited well at the high school level under Sarkisian, but they have also used the portal aggressively to fill specific needs. Now they are running an experiment in self-sufficiency on the offensive line, and the SEC is not going to wait for them to figure it out.
If Manning gets time, Texas wins a lot of games this year. If Manning is running for his life, the season gets ugly fast. The center position is the single biggest variable between those two outcomes. Steve Sarkisian has the entire summer to develop an answer. The first real test comes in late August.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
