Could Texas Tech football play 2026 season opener against Texas?

Texas Tech football coach Joey McGuire ramped up his school's longstanding invitation to play the University of Texas, saying the Red Raiders and the Longhorns should open the season against each other — this season.

It was more than a spontaneous, offhand remark.

McGuire said he's spoken with Abilene Christian coach Keith Patterson and Texas State coach G.J. Kinne about playing each other on Sept. 5, freeing up Texas Tech and Texas to resume a series that's gone dormant since UT left the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference.

Further, McGuire said Texas Tech University System Board of Regents chairman Cody Campbell has reached out to Dallas Cowboys CEO and executive vice president Stephen Jones about the availability of AT&T Stadium in Arlington as a possible neutral site for a Tech-Texas game. That's if the Longhorns don't want to come to Lubbock, McGuire said.

"I've actually talked to Keith Patterson, and I've talked to G.J. Kinne," McGuire said on Thursday, May 27, "and they're willing to take our games, and Abilene Christian will go to Texas State. We'll buy our contract out with Abilene Christian. I'm sure, because Texas has got a lot of money, they can buy their contract out [with Texas State].

"I do know there's a lot of Red Raiders that will help them buy that contract out if they don't want to, and they can come to Lubbock week one, and we can figure out if their twos and threes can win this conference."

Campbell subsequently posted on the social media platform X that Tech athletics would pay the buyout for both its own game against ACU and UT's game against Texas State. The Tech-ACU game is the second of a two-game contract signed in March 2017. The buyout is $1 million, due within 60 days after the game.

In addition to Texas State, the Longhorns' other non-conference games this season, both in Austin, are Sept. 12 against Ohio State and Sept. 19 against UT-San Antonio.

McGuire's comments, made on a Zoom meeting with reporters, came during the Big 12 spring business meetings in Frisco.

His reference to whether Texas's "twos and threes can win this conference" was an allusion to comments Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian made a week earlier at an alumni event in Houston. Speaking in the context of strength-of-schedule considerations for a College Football Playoff committee, Sarkisian said, "There’s a team in our state in another conference with a schedule that I would argue if I played with our twos and threes, we could go undefeated, and they’ll probably make the CFP this year,” Sarkisian told an audience at the Omni Galleria.

Texas has a non-conference series with Notre Dame scheduled for 2028 and 2029. On3 Sports reported on Wednesday, May 26, that UT athletics director Chris Del Conte sounded noncommittal about those games, saying they are "tentatively on the schedule right now."

That comment didn't go unnoticed by McGuire either, considering Tech needs Power Four conference games in 2028 and 2029 after Mississippi State recently canceled a two-game series with the Red Raiders in those seasons.

"And so we'll take that game if they want to get out of it," McGuire said. "I love [Notre Dame coach] Marcus Freeman. We've become friends over some of my comments about Notre Dame, and so Notre Dame, don't beat me up, but if Texas doesn't want to play Notre Dame, then we'd love to play Notre Dame in '28 and '29."

Texas Tech has also been in hurry-up mode to find a replacement on its 2027 schedule for North Carolina State after NC State recently opted out of a return game in Lubbock as part of a two-game series. NC State will owe Tech a $1 million buyout.

"We should be, in the next two weeks, be able to announce that [replacement] game," McGuire said.

Regarding his push to play Texas this season, McGuire acknowledged the Red Raiders haven't measured up in some recent high-profile games. He noted Tech's shutout loss to Oregon in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal last season and a 57-7 loss at Texas in 2023, when, McGuire said, "he played some of his twos and threes. They kicked the crap out of us." That was the last time the two teams played.

That notwithstanding, McGuire said, "If they want to play week one, then we're ready. We would love to play the University of Texas."

Del Conte did not immediately respond to a text message sent by The Avalanche-Journal. Two members of the UT sports information staff also did not immediately reply to an email from The A-J.