Steve Sarkisian’s offseason talk ignites a Texas-Texas Tech Week 1 challenge

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has spent parts of the offseason building expectations around how Texas is supposed to look in Year 2 of the SEC era. The problem is that his message has been paired, at least in recent weeks, with a fairly sharp argument about how schedule strength should factor into the College Football Playoff. Reporters and rival coaches have taken the comments as more than analysis, and in Texas’ case, they land right after a 2025 season that ended with the Longhorns left out of the Playoff and in the Cheez-It Citrus Bowl instead.

According to reporting from the Sporting News and San Angelo Live, Sarkisian made the point to a crowd at the Touchdown Club in Houston that if a team in Texas’ state had Texas Tech’s sort of schedule, he believed it could have handled a stretch with its second- and third-string players and still gone undefeated. The quote that’s been repeated in the coverage includes Sarkisian saying there is “a team in our state” with a schedule he believes could allow that kind of outcome, and he added that the team would “probably” make the CFP.

Sarkisian’s comments did not get a quiet reception. Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire responded publicly, arguing that Texas should prove it on the field. In the same set of reports, McGuire and Texas Tech indicated they would be willing to buy out their opening-week opponents, clearing a path for a Week 1 matchup between the former Big 12 rivals. San Angelo Live reported that McGuire said, “We would love to play Texas,” and that the idea was discussed as a season-opening game.

The stakes of the exchange are not just personal, they are practical. Texas is set to open the 2026 season against Texas State, while Texas Tech is scheduled to open against Abilene Christian, according to the Sporting News. The challenge, then, is whether the programs can swap the first-week environments they built for the season’s early ramp-up, and whether either side is willing to treat a calendar change as worth the cost. Sporting News also connected Sarkisian’s comments to the larger CFP debate, specifically whether “strength of schedule” should matter in the committee’s evaluation.

For context, Texas’ 2025 postseason matters to how his critics frame this moment. Texas started the year ranked No. 1 and ultimately finished the regular season with enough losses to fall short of the Playoff field, then moved on to the Citrus Bowl. KUT reported that Texas was left out of the 2025 College Football Playoff after starting the season ranked No. 1, and that the Longhorns would play Michigan in the Citrus Bowl on Dec. 31.

Texas did make that Bowl count on the scoreboard. In the Longhorns’ official game recap, UT Athletics reported a 41-27 win over Michigan in the Citrus Bowl. The same recap identifies Arch Manning as the offensive centerpiece, and it frames the win as the closing statement to a season that ended in Orlando rather than in the national-title bracket.

The broader issue is that talk about schedule and playoff logic can become a substitute for wins, especially when expectations are high. UT Athletics has highlighted that Texas made CFP semifinal appearances in 2023 and 2024, which raises the baseline for what “success” is supposed to look like in Austin. With Texas now in the SEC and Texas Tech still in the Big 12, Sarkisian’s choice to poke at scheduling comparisons has given the rivalry an early 2026 storyline, and it gives McGuire a concrete way to force the argument onto a Week 1 stage.