Steve Sarkisian shares uncertainty about future of Texas-Notre Dame home-and-home series
By Andrew Olson
Published:
Notre Dame and Texas have plans for a home-and-home series in 2028 and ’29. Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian, however, seems uncertain about those plans.
The Notre Dame series came up during Sarkisian’s appearance on The Triple Option podcast.
“Honestly, truthfully, I would love to keep Notre Dame on our schedule,” Sarkisian said, per Awful Announcing. “…But I’m not going to do it at the expense of my first responsibility, and that’s to the University of Texas of fielding a great team and putting a team into a position to go win a championship, because that’s my responsibility as the head coach here.”
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Sarkisian’s uncertainty is tied to the unknown future of the College Football Playoff. The SEC expanded to 9 conference games for 2026 and beyond. The SEC’s move was largely expected to coincide with expanding the CFP, but that has not happened yet. The Playoff will be a 12-team field again for the upcoming season. Many leagues have voiced support for expansion to 24 teams with the SEC publicly backing a 16-team format.
“What’s going to happen to the CFP? That’s the hard part,” Sarkisian said. “Is it going to expand? Are we going to go to 16? Are we going to go to 24? And then, is that maybe going to entice us back into keeping those nonconference games? Because right now, it’s a little bit of a flux.”
Texas currently has Notre Dame, Louisiana Tech and UTSA on its 2028 nonconference schedule. The Longhorns plan to play Notre Dame, ULM and UTEP in the nonconference portion of the 2029 schedule.
Andrew writes about sports to fund his love of live music and collection of concert posters. He strongly endorses the Hall of Fame campaigns of Fred Taylor and Andruw Jones.
