It's crazy how much the portal has already changed college football. Players who are really good at their current school wanting to test the market. Small school superstars hoping to work their way into a better conference so they can put film with better competition together to showcase for potential NFL scouts. Big school players who fail to stick at that big school due to elite talent ahead of them on the depth chart or the inability or desire to put in the work behind the scenes.
It seems to me that every big school in the country needs to have a scouting department to weed through all the potential players. I mean we know they all do work with college camps during high school and scouting the recruits as they develop, but the country is enormous so decisions about where to stop looking/watching has to be made at some point. It seems to me that if Texas paired up with a few schools that are not hyper aggressive in Texas (like say Washington, Boston College, and Iowa) they could spare some of the costs of doing it all themselves, but I am sure AD's and Head Coach personalities would make a long-term venture like that problematic. I assume it's just going to be word of mouth stuff - like people you used to coach with reaching out to other coaches in other conferences who might know that particular player better.
With the portal, maybe you can get away with watching film once a name hits the portal and then trying to do a little background at that point, but it seems to me that by the time you decide whether the player is someone that can help your team - that player may already be visiting/committing to another school. Lots of pressure to make quick decisions whether a player can help your team and trying to figure out why a player wants to move (NIL v. playing time v. closer to home v. improved quality of play).