The decision comes months after adding Jack Bouwmeester from Utah.
Special teams coordinator Jeff Banks will have to find his punter of the future after the 2025 with news breaking on Thursday that Texas Longhorns sophomore Michael Kern intends to enter the NCAA transfer portal ahead of its closure on Friday.
Texas punter Michael Kern is entering the transfer portal, his agent @agent__OG tells @CBSSports/@247Sports.
Was Texas’ starting punter as a true freshman last season. Averaged 45.1 yards per punt in the playoffs and had three punts downed inside the 20 vs. Ohio State in the CFP… pic.twitter.com/Oa2MBaQSSK
— Matt Zenitz (@mzenitz) April 24, 2025
Kern was recruited as the Longhorns punter of the future in the 2024 recruiting class out of powerhouse high school St. Thomas Aquinas in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The 6’3, 174-pounder signed with Texas over offers from Army and Eastern Kentucky and was ranked as the No. 4 punter in the class, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings.
Banks had enough confidence in Kern that the Longhorns didn’t take a punter from the NCAA transfer portal last year even though he was a summer enrollee.
The late enrollment of Kern was compounded by an early-season ankle injury that caused him to miss the Oklahoma and Georgia games early in conference play.
When Kern returned, he wasn’t fully healthy and it contributed to some struggles, as Kern finished the season averaging 41.6 yards per punt and averaged just 38.4 yards per punt on the 13 punts over three games following his return. As Kern got stronger late in the season, he averaged 45.4 yards per punt in the Peach Bowl and Cotton Bowl, showing off the leg strength that impressed Banks during the recruiting process.
By that point, Texas had already taken a commitment from Michigan State and Utah transfer Jack Bouwmeester, a proven commodity with one season of eligibility remaining.
“He can help mentor Kern, who has had some of his best games lately. We’re excited about his future, but we feel like we got to get better than so we wanted to enhance that position,” Banks said at Peach Bowl Media Day.
Whether the plan of rostering two scholarship punters for the 2025 season was always going to be a storyline that would play out for the entire offseason, however, even with Kern showing improvement during his first spring on the Forty Acres.
“Michael Kern, have seen a definite big uptick in him. He’s healthy to go along with Jack, and both those guys can bomb the ball. When you can punt the ball and it’s a weapon for you, we felt that a couple different years with [Ryan] Sanborn and [Cameron] Dicker when they were at a high level and flipping the field and things of that nature. So feel good there,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said last week.
But with Bouwmeester presumably edging out Kern in the spring competition at punter, that improvement from Kern will pay off for another program as Texas drops to 83 projected scholarships for the fall.