{"id":439698,"date":"2026-09-18T07:24:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439698\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:24:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T07:24:27","slug":"utsa-heads-to-no-1-texas-as-a-30-point-underdog-and-coach-traylor-questions-games-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/439698\/","title":{"rendered":"UTSA heads to No. 1 Texas as a 30-point underdog \u2014 and Coach Traylor questions games like this"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for TPR Today<\/a>, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.<\/p>\n

The UTSA Roadrunners head to Austin on Saturday as roughly 30-point underdogs against the No. 1-ranked Texas Longhorns. Kickoff at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n

UTSA is coming off a 31-26 win over Texas State in the “Battle for I-35,” but coach Jeff Traylor said this week that games against powerhouse programs such as Texas are becoming increasingly difficult to justify as the financial gap in college football widens.<\/p>\n

“You just can’t play guys that get paid $50-55 million dollars,” he said of the amount top programs can spend on their rosters. “We got to get in the $20 million dollar ranges … we got to get out of the business of playing A&M, LSU, and Texas.”<\/p>\n

Texas is among programs with an estimated football roster budget of roughly $45 million to $55 million this season, compared with about $4.5 million to $5 million for UTSA, according to The Athletic. Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday that the Texas estimate was inaccurate and cautioned that roster-spending figures are difficult to verify because the underlying numbers are not fully public.<\/p>\n

There is a financial incentive for UTSA to make the trip. Texas will pay the Roadrunners $1.7 million for Saturday\u2019s game as part of a multigame scheduling agreement between the schools.<\/p>\n

Traylor said the matchups can also exact a physical cost.<\/p>\n

“You just pray you come home Saturday healthy,” he said. “They’re just so much bigger and so much more powerful than us.”<\/p>\n

\"Jeff<\/p>\n

Stephanie Tacy\/Sipa USA <\/p>\n

\/<\/p>\n

Reuters <\/p>\n

Jeff Traylor coached UTSA as they played UT at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas on September 14, 2024. <\/p>\n

“We’ll try to devise a plan to help our kids, but at the same time, we’ve experienced a lot of losses and injuries from playing these guys through the years,” he said. “We lost 2 or 3 to them last year for the year. And then the year, the last time we played them before last, we lost a couple more for the year. And that can happen anytime, let’s make sure we say that. But the odds go up in these battles.”<\/p>\n

Saturday will be the third meeting between UTSA and Texas.<\/p>\n

The Roadrunners gave the Longhorns a scare in their first matchup in 2022, taking a 17-7 lead in the second quarter and going into halftime tied 17-17 before Texas pulled away for a 41-20 win.<\/p>\n

The gap looked much wider two years later, when Texas beat UTSA 56-7. Saturday\u2019s game comes in an era when NIL compensation and revenue sharing have further widened the financial divide between the programs.<\/p>\n

This will also be the first time UTSA has faced a team ranked No. 1 in both the AP Top 25 and AFCA Coaches Poll.<\/p>\n

UTSA enters the game 2-0 after wins over UT Rio Grande Valley and Texas State. The victory over the Bobcats last weekend was the program\u2019s 100th all-time win and gave the Roadrunners their first 2-0 start since 2021.<\/p>\n

Texas is also 2-0 after rallying to beat then-No. 1 Ohio State 24-23 last weekend. The Longhorns trailed 23-3 entering the fourth quarter before scoring 21 unanswered points, a win that moved them from No. 4 to No. 1 in the AP Top 25.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Bo French faces backlash over post targeting UT students celebrating Ohio State win<\/a><\/p>\n

Traylor also has ties to Texas. He served on the Longhorns coaching staff in 2015 and 2016 before eventually taking over at UTSA.<\/p>\n

The game will be streamed exclusively on SEC Network+ via the ESPN app.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,16971,152258,152259,152262,152260,152261],"class_list":["post-439698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-nil","tag-ut-nil","tag-ut-utsa-football","tag-utsa-football","tag-utsa-nil","tag-utsa-ut-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}