Non-conference scheduling in college football has been a topic of conversation for many years. With college football having no type of central governance, the discourse has been loud over the years about how certain programs and conferences go about scheduling these games.
In an era where nobody with any power in this sport cares about anything other than their own self-interest, games such as the one on Saturday between Ohio State and Texas at Darryl K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium are in jeopardy. We, as fans, should push back on this and demand that someone look out for the sport for once and keep the early season of college football as great as the postseason.
In 2025, the Texas Longhorns went 9-3 in the regular season and 6-2 in SEC play. They had a borderline College Football Playoff case, but finished 13th in the final CFP rankings. They had some wide variance on their resume, as they had three wins over top 14 teams, including two playoff teams.
It was their three losses that kept them out of the Playoff. The loss in Columbus was pretty easy to forgive. A seven-point loss on the road to the team that was ranked No. 1 in the country for the next 14 weeks after that. Their other two losses, however, were unforgivable.
They lost on the road at Florida at the end of September. The Gators were 1-3 going into that game and would end the season 4-8. The Longhorns were the only team they beat with a winning record. After winning their next four games and getting back into the top ten of the CFP rankings, Texas lost to Georgia 35-10 in Athens.
Those losses, however, didn’t stop people from bringing up the fact that Texas could have just two losses if not for them scheduling a road game against Ohio State. This rhetoric really picked up after their season-ending win over No. 3 Texas A&M.
Texas and Ohio State will play each other on Saturday night at DKR, and the Longhorns have committed to playing Michigan in Austin next season, after making trips to those Big Ten schools in the past two years. In December, head coach Steve Sarkisian said "I think anything beyond that is up for discussion."
We’ve already seen some action when it comes to canceling games, as they canceled their home-and-home series with Arizona State in February. Those games were scheduled to take place in 2032 in Tempe and 2033 in Austin. The SEC's move to a nine-game conference schedule was cited as a reason why that series was canceled.
As of now, Texas and Notre Dame have a home-and-home scheduled for 2028 in South Bend and 2029 in Austin. It seems like those games will continue, as schedules are often finalized years in advance.
College football and college sports in general are in a crisis. I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times over the past five years or so. It has nothing to do with the players being able to get paid, although that’s a whole different topic altogether. College sports are currently being run by people who are seemingly only in it to squeeze every dollar out of it.
That’s why the Big Ten extends from coast to coast. It’s why they want 24 teams to be in the College Football Playoff. For the purposes of this topic, it’s why there is a push to stop playing big non-conference games.
Schools get payments for making it and advancing in the College Football Playoff. As currently constructed, the Big Ten splits the entire pool evenly across the conference. The SEC and Big 12 split it across the conference in a tiered system that favors the teams that made the CFP.
The ACC allows the school that made the CFP to keep the whole thing. These systems are all probably as stable as the next court decision. This system has already caused one of the sport’s great rivalries to go away, as Notre Dame and USC will not play for at least the next four years, with the schools citing the possibility of a loss ruining their CFP chances.
Non-conference games help shape the season. Going back to the start of the CFP era in 2014, there is at least one big non-conference game that ended up being a huge factor in shaping the tournament field almost every year. In 2015, Stanford suffered a loss at Northwestern. In 2016, Penn State lost to Pitt, and Oklahoma lost to Ohio State.
In 2017, Ohio State lost to Oklahoma, and Auburn lost to Clemson. In 2021, Ohio State lost to Oregon. In 2025, Texas lost to Ohio State. All of these teams can argue that if they played a fill-in non-conference opponent and paid them a large chunk of cash and beat them by six touchdowns just for rolling their helmets out onto the field, they would’ve made the playoff.
I have a couple of issues with that line of thinking. Not to mince words, it’s selfish and soft. College sports getting to the lawless mess of superconferences that it is now came from everyone looking out only for themselves and never the sport as a whole.
Completely dodging out-of-conference competition to say you made the Playoff and collecting a check at the end of the year isn’t in the spirit of competition at all. It’s soft as hell for that very reason. Teams should want to be tested throughout the season, particularly in an era where regular season losses are forgiven. If you can’t win enough games, then try again next year.
College football is about pageantry. On Saturday night, over 100,000 people will be in one of college football’s iconic venues to watch two of the most iconic brands in American sports. Scarlet and grey, Buckeye stickers, and Brutus on one side. Burnt orange, Beevo, and 100,000 Texans on the other.
Under the bright lights on ABC. If someone who had never heard of college football wanted me to introduce them to the sport, I’d show them games like this. I wouldn’t show them the Cotton Bowl or Fiesta Bowl or some other playoff game in an NFL stadium. I hope that those who run the sport see it the same way.
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