‘I’m surprised it wasn’t 101-100:’ How one 1990 game showed the future of college football
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Dave Wilson, ESPN Staff Writer
ON NOV. 3, 1990, all hell broke loose in the Astrodome.
The TCU Horned Frogs and Houston Cougars combined to make history, stunning the college football world in a shootout that defied belief, with Houston ultimately prevailing, 56-35. Seven NCAA records were set, including a combined 1,563 yards of offense and the most combined passing yards in a game (1,253). There were 13 touchdown drives, with the longest one clocking in at 1:39. As in 99 seconds.
The game drew just 25,725 fans and aired on tape delay at 12:30 a.m. the next day on a regional network called Home Sports Entertainment. Yet, 33 years later, its legacy will be felt in the Cougars’ first Big 12 game, which reunites Houston and TCU in college football’s highest levels for the first time since the Southwest Conference dissolved after the 1995 season.
The game became national news with highlights across the country showing footballs flying left and right, more akin to a tennis match than a football game in that era. That’s what happens when a backup quarterback making his first start, TCU’s Matt Vogler, throws for 690 yards and his opponent, David Klingler, adds 563 and seven touchdowns.
Sonny Dykes, then a baseball player at Texas Tech, couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Hal Mumme, then the coach at miniscule Iowa Wesleyan, watched TCU coach Jim Wacker’s weekly show to see what he was up to, jealous of the yardage they piled up.
“Maybe we’re not crazy after all,” Mumme told his offensive coordinator, Mike Leach, as they continued trying to light up scoreboards of their own, with a sophomore receiver named Dana Holgorsen catching passes in their newly christened Air Raid scheme.
Dykes said this week the game was one that piqued his interest in coaching football, despite not playing in college. He grew up in the SWC era while his dad, Spike Dykes, was the head coach at Texas Tech. In the 1986 season, Spike’s first year as the Red Raiders’ coach, Houston averaged 96.6 passing yards per game under Bill Yeoman, the pioneer of the famed veer option rushing attack, while Wacker, a veer acolyte himself, and TCU averaged 109.6. Just four years later, this was a seismic shift.
“I had just never seen anything like it before, in particular two Texas teams,” Sonny Dykes said. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, if this is what the future looks like, I’m pretty excited about it.'”
Dykes went all in. The record for the combined quarterbacks’ yardage stood until 2014, when it was broken by Washington State’s Connor Halliday (734) and Cal’s Jared Goff (527) for a total of 1,261 yards. The two coaches in that one: Leach and Dykes. In 2016, it was broken again by Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes (734) and Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield (545), both with Air Raid playcallers, Kliff Kingsbury and Lincoln Riley, who played when Leach and Dykes were coaching in Lubbock.
Bob DeBesse, TCU’s offensive coordinator in 1990, who’s now the head coach at Grapevine High School in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, says that long-ago game still feels current.
“It was a glimpse into the future,” DeBesse said. “But who would have ever guessed the future would look like it does?”
JOHN JENKINS ALWAYS believed football should look like it does. He’s a cocky, enigmatic, secretive mad scientist of a coach and the architect of Houston’s version of the run ‘n’ shoot. He coached alongside run ‘n’ shoot guru Mouse Davis for the Houston Gamblers of the USFL, then was promoted to replace Davis as offensive coordinator and got to work tweaking the scheme. In his first game as a playcaller, he rallied the Gamblers and quarterback Jim Kelly from a 33-13 deficit with eight minutes left in the game to a 34-33 win that Sports Illustrated called “The Greatest Game Never Seen” because it also wasn’t televised.
By the time he got to UH in 1987, as offensive coordinator for Jack Pardee, the Cougars were in trouble. In Yeoman’s last season in 1986, the Cougars finished 1-11 and were under NCAA investigation, as much of the SWC was in this era. Jenkins said there was even talk of dropping football.
“The Astrodome was no longer an Eighth Wonder of the World; nobody cared anymore and they didn’t want to see that,” Jenkins said. “Jack Pardee asked me to go talk to half a dozen boosters and I told them, ‘Hey, wait a minute, don’t even think about dropping football at this school. You have no idea what’s fixin’ to happen.’ I’d heard them all — [Baylor’s] Grant Teaff and [Texas’] David McWilliams and Spike and everybody, R.C. [Slocum at Texas A&M], all those guys talking piling up bodies for a 2-yard gain. They have no idea what’s fixin’ to hit them. There’s gonna be some nosebleeds up in the upper deck with balls flying through the air.”
By 1989, Jenkins was right. The Cougars scored 53.5 points a game. They averaged 511 passing yards and 625 total yards (both still NCAA records), culminating in a Heisman Trophy for Andre Ware. Manny Hazard caught a record 142 passes. Chuck Weatherspoon averaged a record 9.6 yards per carry. Houston topped the 60-point mark five times that year, including scoring 95 against SMU and rolling up 1,021 yards of offense (also still a record, as you might guess). Again, nobody saw it, because the Cougars were banned from television because they were on a third NCAA probation because of an estimated 250 recruiting violations at the end of the 25-year Yeoman era, according to the NCAA.
Wacker too had realized that to keep up at TCU, he was going to have to ditch the veer. A few years prior, he installed the “triple shoot,” a variation of the run ‘n’ shoot that utilized more tight ends and backs. Before Leach’s Air Raid offense at Texas Tech made Big 12 teams keep pace, Jenkins was already doing it.
This caught the eye of Stephen Shipley, a highly recruited receiver from East Texas. Shipley has his own deep connections to the evolution of football in the state. He’s the uncle of Jordan and Jaxson Shipley, the former Texas Longhorns wide receivers. But in the late 1980s, his high school, Lindale, was throwing the ball more than most Texas schools did, thanks to the talented Shipley and a strong-armed quarterback named Pat Mahomes. As in the former major leaguer and father of the reigning Super Bowl MVP.
“I remember getting calls from OU and A&M and my first response was, ‘Heck no, I’m not coming to block for your running backs,'” Shipley said. “I wanted to catch the ball. That was the main reason I went to TCU. I knew they had the sanctions, limited scholarships, and it was going to be a tough road, but it was a chance to be a part of the change of the game.”
After the 1989 season, Pardee was hired as the coach of the Houston Oilers (where he unleashed the same offensive assault with Warren Moon across town), and Jenkins succeeded him at U of H as head coach. As his own boss, Jenkins could be as brash as he wanted, like when he unleashed Klingler to throw 11 touchdowns against Eastern Washington that season. When Houston and TCU finally met in Nov. 1990, the Southwest Conference, the laboratory that gave us the Wishbone and the Veer, now saw two dueling all-out aerial attacks.
Marc Dove, TCU’s defensive coordinator at the time, had worked for Emory Bellard, the inventor of the wishbone alongside Jenkins — who was his linebackers coach — at Mississippi State, and said the run ‘n’ shoot was much more challenging to defend. So when it came time to face his old friend Jenkins and Klingler, he knew he had his work cut out for him.
“We tried about everything and found not much of anything that worked,” Dove said of devising schemes to beat the run ‘n’ shoot.
When it came time to face Houston in 1990, Dove tried to mix up coverages, but was also aggressive. Klingler threw four interceptions, though Jenkins said some were bobbled passes and weren’t on him. Still, the machine wasn’t up to Jenkins’ standards at times.
“The expectation was perfection, we expected to score on every play. I remember coming off the field after a five-play drive and Jenks would be pissed, saying ‘What are we doing out there? What’s taking us so long to score?'” Klingler said, laughing. “He was just as frustrated as he could be, because we left three or four touchdowns on the field in five plays and he’d had just about enough of watching it.”
Vogler, meanwhile, was under fire the entire game. Jenkins didn’t believe the backup could stand up to the pressure, so he instructed his defensive coordinator, Larry Coyer, to blitz him relentlessly.
“Oh, [Coyer] was nervous as hell,” Jenkins said. “They all are, all those defensive guys. They always worry like hell, they’re going to get burned on a blitz. Hey, in my opinion, we were ready to go and did not think they could hold up and match us score for score.”
But Vogler did. He stood in there and kept throwing it over the top, including an 80-yard touchdown to Cedric Jackson and an 88-yard score to Kyle McPherson in the first half alone. Klingler, meanwhile, threw four touchdowns passes in the first half as Houston took a 28-14 lead.
“I can remember we’re starting to run off the field at halftime and we crossed paths,” Dove said of his friend Jenkins and Coyer, who he also knew well. “I said, ‘You’re gonna get me fired, John!’ He said, ‘Well, that’s the way it goes.’ And then Coyer said, ‘You’re doing better than me!'”
Vogler rallied TCU with a big third quarter, tying the score at 28-28 with a 9-yard TD to Shipley.
“They blitzed more than anybody I’ve ever seen in my life,” Vogler said. “We were shocked, like, ‘Guys, it’s not working. We’re dropping 88-yard bombs on you because you’re blitzing. Keep doing it and we’ll keep doing this and we’ll just see whoever shakes out with the most points.’ That’s pretty much what happened.”
Klingler and Houston, however, rolled from there, including two touchdown passes to Marcus Grant, who was being covered by TCU’s Larry Brown, the future Super Bowl MVP for the Dallas Cowboys. Grant’s final line: 3 catches, 103 yards, 3 touchdowns.
“I don’t remember what the score was,” Dove said, being reminded it was 56-34. “I’m surprised it wasn’t 101-100.”
There was zero reason to expect this result. Vogler had arrived at TCU because Auburn was put on probation and players could transfer. He was looking for a home, but Auburn was on the quarters system and most schools had already begun classes. He knew some coaches at TCU through his family, so he flew in, arrived on the final day of enrollment, and was running the scout team a week later, backing up Leon Clay.
After Clay was injured, Vogler came into the Houston game with no touchdowns and three interceptions on the year. He finished his first start by going 44-of-79 (an NCAA record for attempts) for 690 yards, five touchdowns and two interceptions. The Frogs finished with five 100-yard receivers, each of whom caught a touchdown.
“The stars have got to be aligned to have that many yards passing and that much explosiveness on both sides of the ball,” DeBesse said. “Larry Coyer went on to become a highly successful defensive coordinator in the NFL for years, but when we shook hands at the end of that game, I’ll never forget the bewildered look on his face. All he said was, ‘What the hell just happened?’ I’ll never forget that. I think we all kind of felt a little bit of that.”
KLINGLER COMPLETED 36 of 53 passes for 563 with 7 TDs and 4 interceptions. Hazard caught 13 for 164. Weatherspoon, the 5-foot-7, 230-pound human wrecking ball, had 17 carries for 178 yards and a TD and caught 6 passes for 92 yards and 2 TDs.
“We would throw about 300 passes a day every practice,” Klingler said. “Game day was like a day off. When you look back on that day, and even the day that I threw for 716 yards against Arizona State, I went 40 for 70. I mean, I missed 30 passes. So it was really actually a pretty bad day. But what we did, we did so well that you could miss 30 times and still put up ridiculous numbers.”
Vogler said the Frogs were not prepared for a four-hour game, missed their flight and had to charter a plane home. In addition to those 79 pass attempts, he had 15 of the Frogs’ 21 carries. He said he spent the flight back to Fort Worth lying in the aisle, with an IV in his arm.
“I was cramping, my legs were locking up and I was dehydrated,” Vogler said. “It was an event, man, and I just got home and went straight to bed. I don’t think most of us woke up until midday the next day.”
Klingler, meanwhile, says he didn’t see the big deal.
“Oh, we would’ve played them in a doubleheader,” he said, laughing.
In a presocial media era, with no television, most of the country found out about the donnybrook the next morning in their local newspapers. Jenkins said that’s when the calls started.
“When Matt registered those kinds of numbers and still got beat by three touchdowns, people started asking, ‘What in the world is going on down there?'” he said.
Dykes said he was always fascinated by Jenkins. Mumme said he started out as a run ‘n’ shoot coach, and has spoken at clinics with Jenkins for decades. But they all agree that nobody knows exactly how Jenkins did it, because his offense is complicated, with receivers automatically converting routes on every play based on coverage, and quarterbacks who have to be in sync. Jenkins was notoriously secretive, rebuffing any attempts to come study what he did, including from Joe Paterno who called to say his quarterbacks kept showing him highlights of Houston and he wanted to know more.
“[Jenkins] was ahead of his time for sure. He was the offensive guru in college football. Not only could nobody figure it out, he didn’t let anybody figure it out,” DeBesse said. “He’s very secretive about what he was doing.”
Klingler agreed.
“You’d have a better chance to get something out of a Russian spy,” Klingler said. “I don’t know that anybody today is doing what he was doing — or has any idea what he was doing. That’s the problem. Me and my brother [Jimmy, who followed him as the Houston starter], Andre [Ware] and Jenks are probably the four guys that know what we were doing, and it’ll probably die with us.”
The Southwest Conference was hobbled by infighting and NCAA punishment, mostly affecting recruiting by any school not named Texas or Texas A&M. After a magical 10-1 season in 1990, with a loss only to Texas, Jenkins suffered through two 4-7 seasons and was forced to resign. Wacker finished 7-4 in 1991, but didn’t make a bowl game. He departed for Minnesota. Both programs suffered in the aftermath. Houston won four games over the next three seasons under Kim Helton. TCU went 13-20-1 in the same span under Pat Sullivan.
A Big 12 matchup marks a new era in the rivalry, with two coaches in Holgorsen and Dykes who are students of games like these.
“When I was a sophomore and junior in college I actually went to several clinics to hear John speak and take notes,” Dykes said. “John had his way, his belief of doing things and that had a huge impact on the Air Raid. The shovel passes and the screens that run ‘n’ shoot teams threw were a big part of the early Air Raid scheme. Football is all about six degrees of separation and there’s piles of influence everywhere. All of our philosophies got shaped by people and events that we didn’t really even know would have an impact on the way we think and what we do as a result.”
The 1990 game, a split-second in the grand scheme of football’s history, made a lasting impression. On Saturday night, the Coogs and Frogs will be pitching it around again in a game that means something.
“Houston finally gets to compete with major college competition again, and they open up with TCU to start with,” Jenkins said. “How about that? What a joy to see that again.”
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Andrea Adelson
ORLANDO, Fla. — Scott Frost walks into the UCF football building and into his office, the one he used the last time he had this job, eight years ago. The shades are drawn, just like they used to be. There are drawings from his three kids tacked to the walls. There are still trophies sitting on a shelf.
He still parks in the same spot before he walks into that same building and sits at the same desk. The only thing that has changed is that the desk is positioned in a different part of the room.
But the man doing all the same things at the University of Central Florida is a different Scott Frost than the one who left following that undefeated 2017 season to take the head coach job at Nebraska.
UCF might look the same, but the school is different now, too. The Knights are now in a Power 4 conference, and there is now a 12-team College Football Playoff that affords them the opportunity to play for national championships — as opposed to self-declaring them. Just outside his office, construction is underway to upgrade the football stadium. The same, but different.
“I know I’m a wiser person and smarter football coach,” Frost said during a sit-down interview with ESPN. “When you’re young, you think you have it all figured out. I don’t think you really get better as a person unless you go through really good things, and really bad things. I just know I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
Out on the practice field, Frost feels the most at home — he feels comfort in going back to the place that has defined nearly every day of his life. As a young boy, he learned the game from his mom and dad, both football coaches, then thrived as a college and NFL player before going into coaching.
He coaches up his players with a straightforwardness that quarterbacks coach McKenzie Milton remembers fondly from their previous time together at UCF. Milton started at quarterback on the 2017 undefeated team, and the two remained close after Frost left.
“I see the same version of him from when I was here as a player,” Milton said. “Even though the dynamic in college football has changed dramatically with the portal and NIL, I think Coach Frost is one of the few coaches that can still bring a group of guys together and turn them into a team, just with who he is and what he’s done and what he’s been through in his life. He knows what it looks like to succeed, both as a coach and a player.”
Since his return, Frost has had to adjust to those changes to college football, but he said, “I love coming into work every day. We’ve got the right kids who love football. We’re working them hard. They want to be pushed. They want to be challenged. We get to practice with palm trees and sunshine and, we’re playing big-time football. But it’s also just not the constant stress meat grinder of some other places.”
Meat grinder of some other places.
Might he mean a place such as Nebraska?
“You can think what you want,” Frost said. “One thing I told myself — I’m never going to talk about that. It just doesn’t feel good to talk about. I’ll get asked 100 questions. This is about UCF. I just don’t have anything to say.”
Frost says he has no regrets about leaving UCF, even though he didn’t get the results he had hoped for at his alma mater. When Nebraska decided to part ways with coach Mike Riley in 2017, Frost seemed the best, most obvious candidate to replace him. He had been the starting quarterback on the 1997 team, the last Nebraska team to win a national title.
He now had the coaching résumé to match. Frost had done the unthinkable at UCF — taking a program that was winless the season before he arrived, to undefeated and the talk of the college football world just two years later.
But he could not ignore the pull of Nebraska and the opportunities that came along with power conference football.
“I was so happy here,” Frost said. “We went undefeated and didn’t get a chance to win a championship, at least on the field. You are always striving to reach higher goals. I had always told myself I wasn’t going to leave here unless there was a place that you can legitimately go and win a national championship. It was a tough decision because I didn’t want to leave regardless of which place it was.”
Indeed, Frost maintains he was always happy at UCF. But he also knew returning to Nebraska would make others happy, too.
“I think I kind of knew that wasn’t best for me,” he said. “It was what some other people wanted me to do to some degree.”
In four-plus seasons with the Cornhuskers, Frost went 16-31 — including 5-22 in one-score games. He was fired three games into the 2022 season after a home loss to Georgia Southern.
After Frost was fired, he moved to Scottsdale, Arizona, where his wife has family. He reflected on what happened during his tenure with the Cornhuskers but also about what he wanted to do with the rest of his career. He tried to stay connected to the game, coaching in the U.S. Army Bowl, a high school all-star game in Frisco, Texas, in December 2022. Milton coached alongside him, and distinctly remembers a conversation they had.
“He said, ‘It’s my goal to get back to UCF one day,'” Milton said. “At that time, I was like, ‘I pray to God that happens.'”
If that was the ultimate goal, Frost needed to figure out how to position himself to get back there. While he contemplated his future, he coached his son’s flag football team to a championship. Frost found the 5- and 6-year-olds he coached “listen better than 19-year-olds sometimes.”
Ultimately, he decided on a career reboot in the NFL. Frost had visited the Rams during their offseason program, and when a job came open in summer 2024, Rams coach Sean McVay immediately reached out.
Frost was hired as a senior analyst, primarily helping with special teams but also working with offense and defense.
“It was more just getting another great leader in the building, someone who has been a head coach, that has wisdom and a wealth of experience to be able to learn from,” McVay told ESPN. “His ability to be able to communicate to our players from a great coaching perspective, but also have the empathy and the understanding from when he played — all of those things were really valuable.”
McVay said he and Frost had long discussions about handling the challenges that come with falling short as a head coach.
“There’s strength in the vulnerability,” McVay said. “I felt that from him. There’s a real power in the perspective that you have from those different experiences. If you can really look at some of the things that maybe didn’t go down the way you wanted to within the framework of your role and responsibility, real growth can occur. I saw that in him.”
Frost says his time with the Rams rejuvenated him.
“It brought me back,” Frost said. “Sometimes when you’re a head coach or maybe even a coordinator, you forget how fun it is to be around the game when it’s not all on you all the time. What I did was a very small part, and we certainly weren’t going to win or lose based on every move that I made, and I didn’t have to wear the losses and struggle for the victories like you do when you’re a head coach. I’m so grateful to those guys.”
UCF athletics director Terry Mohajir got a call from then-head coach Gus Malzahn last November. Malzahn, on the verge of finishing his fourth season at UCF, was contemplating becoming offensive coordinator at Florida State. Given all the responsibilities on his desk as head coach — from NIL to the transfer portal to roster management — he found the idea of going back to playcalling appealing. Mohajir started preparing a list of candidates and was told Thanksgiving night that Malzahn had planned to step down.
Though Frost previously worked at UCF under athletics director Danny White, he and Mohajir had a preexisting relationship. Mohajir said he reached out to Frost after he was fired at Nebraska to gauge his interest in returning to UCF as offensive coordinator under Malzahn. But Frost was not ready.
This time around, Mohajir learned quickly that Frost had interest in returning as head coach. Mohajir called McVay and Rams general manager Les Snead. They told him Frost did anything that was asked of him, including making copies around the office.
“They said, ‘You would never know he was the head coach at a major college program.” Mohajir also called former Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts to get a better understanding about what happened with the Cornhuskers.
“Fits are a huge piece, and not everybody fits,” Mohajir said.
After eight conversations, Mohajir decided he wanted to meet Frost in person. They met at an airport hotel in Dallas.
“He was motivated,” Mohajir said. “We went from coast to coast, talked to coordinators, head coaches, pro guys, all kinds of different folks. And at the end of the day, I really believe that Scott wanted the job the most.”
The first day back in Orlando, Dec. 8, was a blur. Frost woke up at 3:45 a.m. in California to be able to make it to Florida in time for his introductory news conference with his family.
When they pulled into the campus, his first time back since he left in 2017, Frost said he was in a fog. It took another 24 hours for him and his wife, Ashley, to take a deep exhale.
“Rather than bouncing around chasing NFL jobs, we thought maybe we would be able to plant some roots here and have our kids be in a stable place for a while at a place that I really enjoyed coaching and that I think it has a chance to evolve into a place that could win a lot of football games,” Frost said. “All that together was just enough to get me to come back.”
The natural question now is whether Frost can do what he did during his first tenure.
That 2017 season stands as the only winning season of his head coaching career, but it carries so much weight with UCF fans because of its significance as both the best season in school history, and one that changed both its own future and college football.
After UCF finished 13-0, White self-declared the Knights national champions. Locked out of the four-team playoff after finishing No. 12 in the final CFP standings, White started lobbying for more attention to be paid to schools outside the power conferences.
That season also positioned UCF to pounce during the next wave of realignment. Sure enough, in 2023, the Knights began play in a Power 4 conference for the first time as Big 12 members. This past season, the CFP expanded to 12 teams. Unlike 2017, UCF now has a defined path to play for a national title and no longer has to go undefeated and then pray for a shot. Win the Big 12 championship, no matter the record, and UCF is in the playoff.
But Frost cautions those who expect the clock to turn back to 2017.
“I don’t think there’s many people out there that silly,” Frost said. “People joke about that with me, that they’re going to expect you go into undefeated in the first year. I think the fans are a little more realistic than that.”
The game, of course, is different. Had the transfer portal and NIL existed when Frost was at UCF during his first tenure, he might not have been able to keep the 2017 team together. The 2018 team, which went undefeated under Josh Heupel before losing to LSU in the Fiesta Bowl, might not have stayed together, either.
This upcoming season, UCF will receive a full share of television revenue from the Big 12, after receiving a half share (estimated $18 million) in each of his first two seasons. While that is more than what it received in the AAC, it is less than what other Big 12 schools received, making it harder to compete immediately. It also struggled with NIL funding. As a result, in its first two years in the conference, UCF went 5-13 in Big 12 play and 10-15 overall.
Assuming the House v. NCAA settlement goes into effect this summer, Mohajir says UCF is aiming to spend the full $20.5 million, including fully funding football.
“It’s like we moved to the fancy neighborhood, and we got a job that’s going to pay us money over time, and we’re going to do well over time, but we’re stretching a little to be there right now, and that requires a lot of effort from a lot of people and a lot of commitment from a lot of people,” Frost said. “So far, the help that we’ve gotten has been impressive.”
Mohajir points out that UCF has had five coaching changes over the past 10 years, dating back to the final season under George O’Leary in 2015, when the Knights went 0-12. Frost says he wants to be in for the long term, and Mohajir hopes consistency at head coach will be an added benefit. Mohajir believes UCF is getting the best of Frost in this moment and scoffs at any questions about whether rehiring him will work again.
“Based on what I’m seeing right now, it will absolutely work,” Mohajir said. “But I don’t really look at it as ‘working again.’ It’s not ‘again.’ It’s, ‘Will it work?’ Because it’s a different era.”
To that end, Frost says success is not recreating 2017 and going undefeated. Rather, Frost said, “If our group now can help us become competitive in the Big 12, and then, from time to time, compete for championships and make us more relevant nationally, I think we’ll have done our job to help catapult UCF again.”
You could say he is looking for the same result. He’s just taking a different route there.
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Max Olson
Houston transfer safety A.J. Haulcy committed to LSU on Sunday, his agency, A&P Sports, told ESPN.
Haulcy, the top player still available and No. 1 safety in ESPN’s spring transfer portal rankings, committed to the Tigers after taking an official visit Sunday. Miami, Ole Miss and SMU were also contenders for his pledge.
The 6-foot, 215-pound senior defensive back has started 32 games over his three college seasons and earned first-team All-Big 12 honors in 2024 after producing 74 tackles, 8 pass breakups and 5 interceptions, which tied for most in the conference.
LSU has assembled one of the top incoming transfer classes in the country this offseason with 18 signees, including six players — wide receivers Barion Brown (Kentucky) and Nic Anderson (Oklahoma), linemen Braelin Moore (Virginia Tech) and Josh Thompson (Northwestern), cornerback Mansoor Delane (Virginia Tech) and defensive end Patrick Payton (LSU) — who ranked among the top 60 in ESPN’s winter transfer rankings.
The Tigers also landed USF transfer Bernard Gooden, one of the most coveted defensive tackles in the spring transfer window.
Haulcy began his career at New Mexico in 2022, earning a starting role as a true freshman and recording 87 tackles, including a career-high 24 against Fresno State, and two interceptions. The Houston native entered the transfer portal at the end of the season and came home to play for the Cougars.
As a sophomore in 2023, Haulcy recorded a team-high 98 tackles and received votes for Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the Year from the league’s coaches.
Haulcy chose to re-enter the portal April 21 after Houston’s spring game, as did starting cornerback Jeremiah Wilson, who’ll continue his career at Florida State. Wilson and Haulcy were the Nos. 11 and 12 players, respectively, in ESPN’s spring transfer rankings.
BYU picked up a pair of key transfer portal additions Saturday, as brothers Bear and Tiger Bachmeier told ESPN that they have committed to play for the Cougars next season.
The brothers are transferring from Stanford and project to be key players of the immediate and long-term plans for the BYU program.
Bear, a quarterback, committed Saturday morning at the end of his visit, he told ESPN. He is a class of 2025 recruit who committed to Stanford out of high school and enrolled there this spring.
Both Bachmeiers elected to transfer in the wake of Stanford’s dismissal of head coach Troy Taylor in March. After visiting BYU coach Kalani Sitake’s program in recent days, the brothers committed.
For Bear, he is expected to be one of the backups for successful incumbent quarterback Jake Retzlaff in 2025 and compete for the starting job at BYU in 2026.
Bear was attracted to BYU’s open offensive scheme and a rich history of quarterbacks that includes a strong recent run under offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick. He also referenced BYU’s historical success, which stretches from Jim McMahon to Ty Detmer to Steve Young.
“The ability to come in and win games and [Coach] Roderick’s scheme and the pedigree of quarterbacks they have produced in history and recently is enticing,” Bear told ESPN.
Tiger told ESPN he committed to BYU later Saturday. He’ll arrive at BYU having graduated from Stanford in two-and-a-half years with a degree in computer science. He’ll enroll in a graduate program at BYU, he said.
Tiger will be expected to be an immediate contributor at wide receiver. He caught 46 balls over two seasons at Stanford for 476 yards and two touchdowns. He has two years of eligibility remaining.
Bear and Tiger are the second and third brothers to play major college football in their family. Their older brother, Hank Bachmeier, played quarterback at Boise State, Louisiana Tech and Wake Forest, where his college career concluded last year.
There is one more Bachmeier brother remaining: Buck Bachmeier will be a freshman in high school in the fall.
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