After Steve Sarkisian's comments, Texas Tech board chairman offers to pay game buyouts so Red Raiders can play Texas in Week 1

Texas Tech is trying to get Texas and coach Steve Sarkisian to back up their trash talk.

After Sarkisian took a shot at Texas Tech’s schedule and the Big 12 in 2025, the Red Raiders are offering to play Texas in Week 1. Of 2026.

The Longhorns and Red Raiders already have opponents to open the season. Tech is set to play Abilene Christian and Texas is scheduled to play Texas State. But Texas Tech donor and board of regents chair Cody Campbell is publicly offering to pay the buyouts for both games so that the teams can play on Sept. 5.

Campbell’s offer came as Tech coach Joey McGuire said at the Big 12 spring meetings that his team would love to play the Longhorns in Week 1.

According to FBSchedules, it would cost a combined $2.4 million to buy out the games.

Sarkisian’s words about Texas Tech came at a booster event in Houston a week ago. Without naming Tech by name, he said “there’s a team in our state in another conference with a schedule that I would argue, if I played with our 2s and 3s, we could go undefeated, and they’ll probably make the CFP this year.”

Texas Tech played three games ranked opponents in 2025 on the way to a Big 12 title and two of those games came against BYU. The other was against Utah. The Red Raiders’ only loss of the season before the College Football Playoff was at Arizona State.

Texas, which lost three regular season games, played five ranked opponents during the regular season and went 3-2 against those teams. Its other loss came to an unranked Florida team. We’re not going to argue that the Longhorns didn’t have a tougher schedule. But it wasn’t miles more difficult.

We’ll also note that the chances of the buyout offer becoming reality are about as good as your odds of winning the lottery. Texas has a home game against Ohio State in Week 2. It’s not going to want to play a power conference opponent the week before the Buckeyes.

And Texas State would be left scrambling if the buyouts happened too. The Bobcats already have FCS opponent Incarnate Word on their schedule later in September and teams can only count one win against an FCS team for bowl eligibility. Adding Abilene Christian to its schedule instead of Texas would make a second FCS opponent.