The Texas football program is currently gearing up for their high-profile Week One matchup against the Ohio State Buckeyes in Columbus. The game is a rematch of the Cotton Bowl between the two teams last year, which Ohio State won en route to taking home their first national championship in a decade.
Some have wondered why the Longhorns would use one of their out of conference games to take on such a tough opponent and potentially hurt their playoff chances in the process, but recently, Texas athletic director Chris Del Conte got 100% real on why the program is up for the challenge.
“The brand of Texas, we owe it to college football to play this type of game,” Del Conte said, per Danny Davis of the Austin American-Statesman on X , formerly Twitter. “We have Michigan, we have Ohio State, we just scheduled Notre Dame. We had USC, we had LSU and we had a nine-game [conference] schedule in the Big 12. I think with the discussions going around the CFP whether expansion or not, the regular season matters. ”
He also spoke on the personal excitement he feels for the matchup.
“Us not playing A&M for a long time hurt college football. Nebraska not playing Oklahoma makes no sense to me. We’ve got to have those games, they’re important. Us playing Ohio State, everyone’s talking about it. I’m fired up for the game,” he said.
The whole country will indeed be watching when Ohio State square off on Saturday to kick off the new season. The 12-team format of the playoff, which Ohio State took full advantage of last year, does take perhaps a bit of the juice out of the matchup considering the losing team will still have ample opportunity to get their season on the right track, but it is always fun to see titans from different conferences clash on the game's biggest stage.
