On February 17th, Arizona State insider Chris Karpman made the rumor official that the Texas Longhorns requested to cancel playing the Arizona State Sun Devils in 2031 and 2032. That sparked a lot of folks jumping to way too many conclusions. However, according to one football media outlet, the reason is simply a logistical disadvantage.

The math on this is actually pretty simple once you see it from Texas’ perspective. Basically, they’re choosing to protect their home stadium and their wallet. Starting in 2026, the SEC is officially moving to a nine-game conference schedule. For Texas, this means they’ll be playing an extra SEC game every year, and in even years like 2032, they are designated to have five conference road games and only four at home.

The real kicker is the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma. Even though that game is played at a neutral site in Dallas, it counts as a home game for one team and an away game for the other on a rotating basis. In 2032, it’s an “away” year for the Longhorns. If they had kept the trip to Arizona State on the books, they would have been looking at six total games away from Austin.

For someone as big as about Texas, playing just about six home games is absurd at its finest. Home games are revenue-boosters. Think about their ticket sales, concessions, and local tourism. Obviously, they would be letting too much slide. So by canceling the trip to Tempe, Texas can now find different opponents and also little safer opponents to play at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium.

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However, if you look at Arizona State, they are not intent on doing any kind of waitings. The Sun Devils already moved on and filled that gap by scheduling a home-and-home with former-foe Stanford for 2031 and 2032. Interestingly, their contract with Texas actually had a specific get out of jail free clause that allowed either team to cancel without paying a penalty if their conference changed the number of required league games.

This has been a new trend for a while. We can’t even blame them one bit. We’ve already seen Florida cancel games with Cal and NC State, and Alabama drop its big series with Ohio State for the same reason. As the SEC and other “Super Conferences” get tougher, teams are realizing that playing a brutal non-conference road game just isn’t worth the risk to their playoff hopes or their home-game revenue. Welcome to strategic warfare time in college football.

Texas head honcho Steve Sarkisian has been hinting at this for months now.

Steve Sarkisian wants Texas to rethink how it schedules non-conference games

Coach Steve Sarkisian is pushing for a major shift in how Texas picks its non-conference opponents because he’s frustrated with the 2025 playoff selection process.

Despite the Longhorns playing five top-10 teams (the most of any contender out there) they were left out of the 12-team field after a 9-3 season.

He pointed out that they got hammered for a close 14-7 loss to Ohio State, while other teams with “cupcake” schedules cruised into the playoffs just because they had fewer losses. His arguement is actually simple: why play a gauntlet if the committee doesn’t actually reward you for it?

“I think we have to. At the end of the day, now we’re going to nine conference games. We’ve got to be mindful of the fact that we’ve played five top-ten ranked teams,” Sarkisian said back in December. “The next closest team that’s ranked ahead of us has played two. There’s multiple teams in front of us that have played none. At that point, if we’re just staring at a record. We’ve got to put ourselves in a better position to get a better record.”

He says his main job is to get his guys a ring, and that’s a lot harder to do if you’re adding extra “heavyweight” fights in the non-conference. He’s looking for the path of least resistance to a 10- or 11-win season. This means
means fewer risky road trips and more games where Texas is the heavy favorite.

Sark and AD Chris Del Conte are basically saying that if a game doesn’t help them get into the playoff, it’s not worth doing. They are still going to play the big home games they already have on the books. For example: Ohio State coming to Austin later this year. But they’re no longer interested in “fair” home-and-home deals that force them to travel to tough environments.