Week 1 provided a satisfying introduction to the 2026 college football season, but Week 2 serves up the true main-event of the campaign’s first month.
“It’s great for college football,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said on Tuesday of his No. 1-ranked Buckeyes visiting No. 5 Texas on Saturday. “This is going to be an unbelievable atmosphere down here against a great opponent. Everybody in the country will be watching.”
And everybody tuning into the prime-time kickoff from Austin presumably agrees with Day that this matchup is indeed great for the sport, regardless if one is wearing scarlet and gray or burnt orange.
The Week 1 slate was not without thrilling contests, capped on Monday with SMU escaping Florida State with a 27-24 win. The Mustangs’ victory was the second marquee matchup in as many nights coming down to a field goal, as Ole Miss outlasted Louisville in a Sunday night barnburner, 41-38.
Second-ranked Oregon’s 34-27 win over Boise State on Saturday likewise provided an exciting return to action. What’s more, it embodied a positive byproduct of the College Football Playoff as it exists now.
Before the expansion to a 12-team tournament, the loss — which came down to the final possession — would have eliminated Boise State from title contention. Given the Broncos’ status coming in unranked, winning in such nail-biting fashion may well have ended Oregon’s aspirations for a championship back in the Bowl Championship Series days.
The opposite side of that perspective, however, suggests that lower stakes for high-profile non-conference contests devalues their meaning. In the BCS days, Ohio State-Texas might well have been a de facto playoff game in an era when only two teams could play for a national championship at season’s end.
One can be understandably pessimistic over college football trading in a postseason atmosphere every Saturday over the span of three months for a system that has the 2025 version of Alabama competing for a title.
But in the same vein, Ohio State traveling to Texas offers hope of the sport encouraging more of these kind of early-season matchups.
Consider that in 1998 — the first season of the BCS — the campaign kicked off with eight Top 25 matchups in Weeks 0 and 1. The 2026 slate opened with just the Ole Miss-Louisville game.
This year’s slate is more in line with the trend that began early into the BCS years. The system tacitly discouraged scheduling up in the non-conference almost immediately, with a trip to Miami denying UCLA a title-game spot in 1998 and the Hurricanes coming up on the other end of a similar scenario in 2000 when it lost a September heartbreaker at Washington.
By the first season of the four-team Playoff in 2014, the season kicked off with just one Top 25 game. Here in the 12-team era, the dearth of such contests in the non-conference portion of most teams’ schedules has become more of a tradition than heavyweight showdowns like Ohio State and Texas.
Should Saturday’s losing side endure the rest of their schedule that follows, however, and lands a spot in the Playoff, perhaps the expanded bracket can be the conduit that creates more such matchups.
That’s a win for the players who seek high-profile competition, as Day alluded to on Tuesday.
“This is why you come to Ohio State,” he said.. “This is why you come to Texas.”
And games like Ohio State-Texas are why we follow college football.
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