Texas' 2025 schedule is wonky, poorly planned and filled with some of the toughest matchups in the nation
Even with the Longhorns having to face a defending national champion and the defending SEC champion in their home stadiums in 2025, the biggest detriment to Texas’ hopes of pushing for a top-four seed in the College Football Playoff may just be its schedule makeup.
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This isn’t to be confused with how hard Texas’ average opponent is. Florida and Oklahoma go through true gauntlets in the SEC this year. Even though Texas’ schedule will inherently look easier than other opponents’ because they can’t be matched against themselves, Georgia and Alabama play just three games combined against the projected bottom four SEC teams. Texas plays all four of them in 2025.
The Ohio State matchup looming in Week One inherently gives Texas one of the hardest OOC matchups in the nation, and trips to Georgia, Florida, and the Red River Rivalry are some of the toughest games in the SEC. But that’s not what this is about—rather, Texas has one of the oddest schedules we’ve seen in recent CFB history.
Firstly, it has become extremely rare for powerhouses like Ohio State and Texas to schedule these types of matchups for the very first game of the year. On a recent episode of The Stampede, Mack Brown told Vince Young he preferred some sort of “tune-up” game before playing their large out-of-conference matchup—like when they lost to the Buckeyes in 2006.
Instead, Texas and Ohio State headline one of three top-10 matchups in the first week of the season. The last Week One top-10 matchup was three years ago. This is the first time top-three teams have met this early in the season.
But then, for all intents and purposes, Texas gets over a month before they play meaningful football. Texas plays three games at home against G6 opponents, then has a bye week, then plays Florida in The Swamp on October 4. By Week Six, teams like Auburn, Ole Miss, and South Carolina will have already played two SEC games with a third coming in. It will be Texas’ first.
What makes October even more unique, however, is how much of it is played away from Austin. Scratch that—all of it is played away from Austin: at Florida, in Dallas against Oklahoma, at Kentucky, and at Mississippi State. Local fans and students have to wait 42 days to see their team at home. Even the ACC’s strangest schedules give fans a home game at least once every four weeks. Texas fans have to wait six.
“Very unique. I noticed that when it came out last season, it was like, Wow. This is a little bit different,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. “It’s uniquely challenging. And we have some very tough road games.”
Sarkisian pointed out the uniqueness of every road game: Ohio State’s The Shoe in Week One, The Swamp in Week Five, the always-tough Red River Rivalry, a night game in Lexington, and the cowbells in Starkville. While some Texas fans see the latter as easy wins, think about the situation. Two extremely tough games away from home the week before, Texas’ players will be tired and in a hostile environment for their third or fourth week in a row. That’s where upsets come from.
Texas ends the year in a more neutral capacity, playing at home, taking a bye week, then hosting two of its last three in Austin. Three rivalry games cap off the season: hosting old rivals Arkansas, heading to new rivals Georgia, and hoping to secure a second-straight win in the new era of the Lone Star Showdown to end the year in DKR.
“We get back-to-back rivals with Arkansas and A&M. And so, like I said, I think the key for us is one week at a time, and I hate using coaching adages with you guys… But for us this year, that’s kind of the secret sauce,” Sarkisian said. “It’s like, what’s right in front of us? Let’s be present in the moment and prepare for that opponent and not get caught up looking down the road.”
Texas has two of the rarest scheduling conflicts in college football. A top-three matchup has never kicked off a year, and a 42-day away-from-home stretch will be grueling for the players in October. While Texas fans may see the season coming down to just five games, Sarkisian makes a good point about taking it week by week. If Georgia and A&M are all you care about, Kentucky or Mississippi could ruin your title hopes before they’ve even started.
Category: General Sports
