Non-SEC Football

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Texas Tech’s offer to open the season against Texas is unserious​

The Red Raider should solve their own scheduling problems.

Steve Sarkisian issued the initial volley against the Texas Tech Red Raiders. And Joey McGuire has responded with his own offer for the Texas Longhorns.

Last week, Sarkisian attracted the type of attention that can only come from an inflammatory comment during the depth of the offseason when he lambasted Texas Tech’s schedule in an appearance at the Touchdown Club of Houston.

“There’s a team in our state in another conference with a schedule that I would argue if I played with our twos and threes, we could go undefeated, and they’ll probably make the CFP this year,” Sarkisian said.

According to ESPN’s strength of schedule metric, that in-state school, Texas Tech, played the No. 46 schedule nationally in 2025, well behind the No. 9 schedule faced by Texas.

After playing Arkansas-Pine Bluff, Kent State, and Oregon State in its non-conference schedule last year, McGuire’s program will face off against Abilene Christian, Oregon State, and Sam Houston in 2026, a schedule that College Football News ranks 65th.

Sarkisian’s comment prompted a quick response from Texas Tech mega booster Cody Campbell.
On Thursday, Red Raiders head coach Joey McGuire made a more concrete offer to the Longhorns to create a Week 1 matchup against Texas.

“We’re willing to buy our contract out of ACU,” McGuire said. “I’m sure because Texas has got a lot of money, they can buy their contract out, but I do know there’s a lot of Red Raiders that could help them buy that contract out if they don’t want to, and they can come to Lubbock in Week 1 and figure out if their twos and threes can win this conference.”

“I do know that Cody Campbell reached out to Stephen Jones, so if they don’t want to come to Lubbock, then we’re going to work on trying to get to AT&T Stadium. So if they want to play Week 1, we’re ready. We would love to play the University of Texas.”

After McGuire’s challenge, Campbell stepped in again, offering to cover the buyout for Texas’ season opener against Texas State.

The problem is that the offer from the Red Raiders is not just fundamentally unserious, it actively disregards the point that Sarkisian was making — the Texas head coach didn’t say that the Horns could beat the Raiders with their two and threes, he said they could beat the teams on the embarrassingly poor schedule Texas Tech is set to play in 2026, a combination of exceedingly unambitious non-conference games with the nine-game slate provided by the extraordinarily diluted Big 12 Conference.

And that’s one notable aspect of this whole discussion.

When the Big 12 was first diluted by departures from Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas A&M, Texas responded with aggressive non-conference scheduling that resulted in home-and-home series against Notre Dame, USC, LSU, Alabama, Michigan, and Ohio State.

When the Longhorns and the Sooners left for the SEC, the Red Raiders had plenty of time to add legitimate non-conference opponents and opted against it, but now want Texas to solve the problem it created by being afraid of scheduling legitimate programs just because Sarkisian called them out publicly.
Don’t take it from me — consider the opinion of an Aggie.

Robert Behrens
@rcb05

"If Tech actually wanted to beef up their non-conference schedule I’m sure there are P4 teams who would oblige. But they’d rather score PR points by making Texas (who already plays one of the hardest schedules in the country) tell them no. All because Sark hurt their feelings."

From the unsurprisingly warped perspective of the Texas Tech fanbase, the unwillingness of Texas to schedule another series against its former conference opponent is a sign that the Longhorns are scared, an opinion sharply at odds with the program’s longtime scheduling philosophy that is now in the spotlight because the College Football Playoff committee left three-loss Texas out of the 12-team field last December despite three top-10 wins, a top-10 schedule, and head-to-head wins over two teams that did make the playoff. Two of the three losses by the Horns also came against teams selected for the CFP.

Because the committee claims to value strength of schedule and head-to-head competition in its selection criteria, Sarkisian and the Texas administration have been frustrated by the massive chasm between how the committee says it evaluates teams and how they actually make their selections.

Hence the dig at the one-loss Tech team that made the playoff after plowing through a laughable schedule only to get run out of the playoff by Oregon in an embarrassing performance. Might that not happen again in this season after playing another bad schedule?

Then there’s the unserious nature of what McGuire is actually proposing — for Texas to give up one of its home games that season ticket holders have already paid for to go play Texas Tech in Lubbock or in Arlington, raising the question of why the Red Raiders aren’t willing to come play the Longhorns in Austin.

With a non-conference game against Ohio State highlighting a schedule that ranks No. 3 nationally by CFN, Texas doesn’t need to bolster its resume and certainly isn’t scared of playing a high-profile opponent, a standard that Tech arguably doesn’t even rise to just because it had one good season against a bad schedule.
So why isn’t McGuire willing to come to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium to play the Horns?

Perhaps it’s because of the resounding 57-7 beatdown that Texas leveled against Texas Tech in its last trip to the Forty Acres. Perhaps it’s because the Longhorns have dominated the all-time series 55-18. Perhaps it’s because Texas is 32-7 against Texas Tech in Austin.

And that’s not even mentioning a legitimate tertiary reason for the Horns to never schedule another game in Lubbock again — the abominable behavior of the Red Raiders fans on and off the field during the last trip in 2022 that featured numerous off-field altercations and a field storming that resulted in fans making contact with visiting players, an unsafe situation that the scarlet and black goons comprising the Tech fanbase would only be too happy to recreate were their wildest dreams to come true in September.

After leaving the Big 12, the Longhorns are off to bigger and better things. And if Texas Tech actually has ambitions of legitimacy, Campbell and McGuire should go call other programs if they actually care about fixing their garbage non-conference schedules. The Texas slate is already set.

Texas Tech’s offer to open the season against Texas is unserious

The Red Raider should solve their own scheduling problems.

www.burntorangenation.com

 

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