Texas coach Steve Sarkisian is an unabashed college football fan. Just the idea of the Texas Longhorns facing the Michigan Wolverines gets his blood pumping.
“Every time I see these two uniforms on the field together, it just looks right,” Sarkisian said Monday. “Looks like college football to me.”
As crazy as it sounds, the two iconic programs have met only once in gridiron history — the 2005 Rose Bowl, an iconic matchup won on a game-ending field goal by UT’s Dusty Mangum.
This game was a decade in the making. The original home-and-home series was first announced in 2014. The Longhorns were scheduled to host the Wolverines in 2024 and the return game would be played in Ann Arbor in 2027. Back then, it sounded like another lifetime away.
Related: Long live Texcalibur! Texas Longhorns use turnover sword to slice up footballs, start new tradition
“A matchup of this magnitude doesn’t come along all that often,” then-Michigan coach Brady Hoke said at the time of the initial announcement. “And when it does it’s special for both programs and the great fans that support each institution.”
In 2021, Texas announced it was leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The game itself would become a serious negotiating chip.
Fox Sports needed another high-profile matchup for its “Big Noon Saturday” TV package before the network would sign off on letting UT leave the Big 12 one year early. As part of the dealmaking, the two schools agreed to flip the location for the first game, turning it into a Michigan home game broadcast on Fox.
Now, Texas will host Michigan in 2027. By then, the schools might have already played again in the expanded College Football Playoff format.
But the highly anticipated game is here, Fox executives are happy and Texas is now in the SEC.
Related: Texas Longhorns lineman wins SEC weekly award after season-opening win
“They’ve won 16 games in a row. They've won 23 straight home games,” Sarkisian said. “So these guys know how to win. You can see it in their style of play. They play with a great deal of confidence. They believe in one another, so it[‘s a heck of a challenge for our team.
“But this is why you come to Texas, to play in games like this,” he added. “And to think this is the first time in the history of college football that Texas is going to play Michigan in the regular season is pretty awesome and pretty humbling to be part of that. And so we're definitely looking forward to the opportunity.”
Texas opened as a 3.5-point favorites but it quickly ballooned to 6.5 points. The Longhorns will travel 46 players this weekend who also went to Tuscaloosa, Ala., last year in Texas’ double-digit win over coach Nick Saban and the Alabama Crimson Tide.
That experience in a big-game environment should help the Longhorns this week in the famous Big House.
“As long as we stay enamored with us and play our game,” quarterback Quinn Ewers said, “I think we'll be good.”
Local Austin, TX
Most Popular
Comments / 0