Those few months between college football’s spring practice and August workouts, we call that talking season, and Steve Sarkisian was gums a-flappin’ on Thursday, May 21. In front of the Touchdown Club of Houston, the Texas Longhorns’ coach took a poke at a neighbor.
“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 told an audience at the Omni Galleria.
Sarkisian spoke in the context of a College Football Playoff committee comparing teams’ strength of schedule.
Sarkisian didn’t name the program — does he mean SMU? — but everyone assumes he was talking about your Texas Tech football team, the one coming off a Big 12 championship and a debut appearance in the College Football Playoff.
Texas Tech people sure did. Some of them countered that Texas, thanks partly to losing to a Florida team that finished 4-8 last season, missed the CFP. Others noted Sarkisian’s teams went 17-10 in conference play during his last three years in the Big 12 before the Longhorns bolted to the Southeastern Conference.
Mostly, they noted that UT’s been not taking Tech’s calls the past couple of years.
In a retaliatory shot at Sarkisian on X, Tech general manager James Blanchard posted, “Checks this past year’s NFL draft and laughs, checks this past year’s playoff bracket and laughs again.” Later Blanchard wrote, “For the longest they claimed, ‘it just means more,’ ” using the SEC slogan. “Now it’s a bunch of excuses.”
Texas Tech Regents chairman Cody Campbell, offered up, “Schedule us then! We’ve been talking about it for years and we are more than willing!!”
True enough. Texas Tech has offered something close to a standing invitation to play the Longhorns whenever, wherever since the series went dormant. Tech and Texas played every year from 1960 through 2023 before the Longhorns ditched the Big 12 for the SEC. Tech and Texas A&M played in all but two years from 1942 through 2011 before the Aggies left.
The Longhorns and the Aggies should still play the Red Raiders — best case annually, worst case frequently.
On the list of nauseating developments in college sports during the 21st century, high up there is the refusal — cavalier and puerile — to square off with longtime rivals. Wherever it happens, fans lose. Around here, it’s an affront to football in the state of Texas.
You’d be wrong to chalk up UT’s hubris or A&M’s dodging as just an SEC thing. Annually, Florida still plays Florida State, Georgia plays Georgia Tech, Kentucky indulges Louisville and South Carolina and Clemson get it on.
Texas turning a deaf ear to Texas Tech? That’s just the Longhorns being lame.
Sark’s remarks Thursday moved Tech-Texas back into the conversation for a day or two at least. National college football media picked up on it. Some suggested Sarkisian should put his money where his mouth is and go play the Red Raiders.
Texas Tech, hit with a couple of series cancellations recently, suddenly has plenty of open slots on the non-conference schedule. The Longhorns are scheduled up for the next four years, including non-conference games against Ohio State in 2026, Michigan in 2027 and Notre Dame in 2028 and 2029.
Fair enough.
The Longhorns have nothing going with a Power Four non-conference opponent in the 2030s, though.
And even if Sark can beat the Big 12 with his twos and threes, I imagine Joey McGuire will let him use his ones if he’ll just come back to Lubbock.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Sark talks but won’t take up Texas Tech football’s offer to play
Reporting by Don Williams, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / Lubbock Avalanche-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
