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After losing out on LSU Tigers graduate transfer quarterback Brandon Harries, the Texas Longhorns have shifted focus to Notre Dame Fighting Irish graduate transfer Malik Zaire and Louisville Cardinals graduate transfer Kyle Bolin.
According to the Louisville Courier-Journal, Texas and Western Michigan have both been in contact, along with a scholarship offer from Northern Illinois.
Bolin announced his transfer from Louisville following the spring game for the Cardinals, which he did not participate in to save reps for players who will remain in the program.
A May graduate, the 6’3, 195-pounder will be free to enroll in his school of choice and become will have immediate eligibility for one season.
"I feel that I'm a very good football player and I feel that I can be one of the top quarterbacks in the country,” Bolin said after the Louisville spring game. “If you ask my teammates that, I think they would say the same thing because they tell me that. Being in the situation I've been in was kind of difficult, to go from the starter to not being the starter. You just have emotions going up and down, and you start losing confidence.”
In 2014, Bolin made his first career start for Louisville against Georgia in the Belk Bowl, then started five more games in 2015, throwing for 1, 514 yards and seven touchdowns, in addition to throwing six interceptions.
“We need more than two scholarship quarterbacks, that’s for sure, and we’re going to try to do that,” Texas head coach Tom Herman said after last Saturday’s Orange-Whtie game. “You can’t wave a magic wand and one shows up. The circumstances have to line up.”
Those circumstances include whether the Longhorns can get Bolin into graduate school at Texas and whether he’s willing to enter a situation where sophomore Shane Buechele looks like the starter in all but name.
Western Michigan, for instance, lost senior starter Zach Terrell, so Bolin would have a better opportunity to compete for the starting job in Kalamazoo than Austin.
Bolin was a consensus four-star prospect in the 2013 class out of Lexington.