UTSA heads to No. 1 Texas as a 30-point underdog — and Coach Traylor questions video games like this

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The UTSA Roadrunners head to Austin on Saturday as roughly 30-point underdogs in opposition to the No. 1-ranked Texas Longhorns. Kickoff at Darrell Ok Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is at 7 p.m.

UTSA is coming off a 31-26 win over Texas State within the “Battle for I-35,” however coach Jeff Traylor mentioned this week that video games in opposition to powerhouse applications comparable to Texas have gotten more and more troublesome to justify because the monetary hole in faculty soccer widens.

“You just can’t play guys that get paid $50-55 million dollars,” he mentioned of the quantity prime applications 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.”

Texas is amongst applications with an estimated soccer roster funds of roughly $45 million to $55 million this season, in contrast with about $4.5 million to $5 million for UTSA, based on The Athletic. Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian mentioned Thursday that the Texas estimate was inaccurate and cautioned that roster-spending figures are troublesome to confirm as a result of the underlying numbers are usually not totally public.

There is a monetary incentive for UTSA to make the journey. Texas can pay the Roadrunners $1.7 million for Saturday’s recreation as a part of a multigame scheduling settlement between the faculties.

Traylor mentioned the matchups may also actual a bodily price.

“You just pray you come home Saturday healthy,” he mentioned. “They’re just so much bigger and so much more powerful than us.”

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“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 mentioned. “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.”

Saturday would be the third assembly between UTSA and Texas.

The Roadrunners gave the Longhorns a scare of their first matchup in 2022, taking a 17-7 lead within the second quarter and going into halftime tied 17-17 earlier than Texas pulled away for a 41-20 win.

The hole seemed a lot wider two years later, when Texas beat UTSA 56-7. Saturday’s recreation is available in an period when NIL compensation and income sharing have additional widened the monetary divide between the applications.

This may also be the primary time UTSA has confronted a crew ranked No. 1 in each the AP Top 25 and AFCA Coaches Poll.

UTSA enters the sport 2-0 after wins over UT Rio Grande Valley and Texas State. The victory over the Bobcats final weekend was this system’s one centesimal all-time win and gave the Roadrunners their first 2-0 begin since 2021.

Texas can also be 2-0 after rallying to beat then-No. 1 Ohio State 24-23 final weekend. The Longhorns trailed 23-3 coming into the fourth quarter earlier than scoring 21 unanswered factors, a win that moved them from No. 4 to No. 1 within the AP Top 25.

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Traylor additionally has ties to Texas. He served on the Longhorns teaching workers in 2015 and 2016 earlier than finally taking on at UTSA.

The recreation might be streamed completely on SEC Network+ by way of the ESPN app.