Is a wannabe SEC power about to walk the same cowardly route as the USC Trojans? Comments from Texas AD Chris Del Conte certainly indicate that, given what he said about the Longhorns' home-and-home series against Notre Dame, the Austin school might look to back out.
The SEC schools are wrapping up a week's worth of meetings about the conference's future while also planning how many conference games each program will play. Reports came out on Thursday that some coaches felt they were tricked into agreeing to a nine-game conference slate. Schools will also no longer have late-season "cupcake" games starting in 2027. The removal of those cupcake games and one more conference game than its Power 4 brother-in-arms, the Big Ten, has Texas examining its non-conference slate.
Notre Dame and Texas have a short series planned for the 2028 and 2029 seasons, but Del Conte wouldn't commit to that series surviving the latest changes in the SEC on Thursday. When asked whether the Longhorns still intended to play the Fighting Irish, the AD would only say “they’re ‘tentatively’ on the schedule right now,”
The standing for Marcus Freeman's program on Texas' schedule is, of course, not actually tentative. Or at least it's not supposed to be. The schools worked out an agreement for the two-game series. Should UT back out, it would almost certainly be for the same reasons that USC canceled one of the most historic series in college football.
Texas & Notre Dame scheduled to play home/home series in 2028-29, but UT AD Chris Del Conte wouldn’t fully commit the games would be played. “They’re ‘tentatively’ on the schedule right now,” Del Conte said
— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 27, 2026
Texas could give Notre Dame football another blue-blood scheduling fight à la USC
If the SEC program does follow USC's lead and back out of its games against Notre Dame because it doesn't want such a tough non-conference slate, it should take heed. Since the Trojans decided they no longer wanted to play their historical rival, even alumni of that school have voiced their extreme displeasure. The grumbling has grown so loud that preliminary talks have started about reopening the rivalry in a few years.
Even when certain allied members of the media tried to blame Notre Dame for that rivalry being left by the wayside, the general public wasn't buying it. It's also worth noting USC replaced the Golden Domers with Utah State, a rather obvious step down in terms of quality opponent.
If Texas does drop the Irish, the only reason it would do so is to replace them with that cupcake game they lost at the end of the year. One would hope the college football public would once again have a problem with two storied programs canceling a series so that UT fans can watch them blow out an FCS program by 50 points.
The one hope here is that cooler heads can prevail and any thoughts Del Conte is having about shifting the schedule will ultimately depart. This kind of shift tends to have more blowback on Notre Dame than it does the school that's running away. One need only see the backlash and talk of a weak schedule for the 2026 season to understand that.
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