AUSTIN, Texas — Texas coach Steve Sarkisian was asked Thursday whether he feels pressure before the Texas Longhorns host the top-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, and he answered by listing what is attached to the game.
Sarkisian’s position is that the sellout, the ESPN “College GameDay” set in Austin, and the night television window are all products of what Texas has already done.
“I feel like we’ve earned the right to be on this stage,” Sarkisian said on a 20-minute Zoom call with mostly local reporters. “If we weren’t any good, I promise you there wouldn’t be College GameDay here. If we weren’t any good, it probably wouldn’t be a sellout. If we weren’t any good, it might not be on national television at night. But you know what? We’re pretty good. And we’ve earned that to get ourselves to this point. So let’s go enjoy the moment. Let’s go play good football and put our best foot forward and see what happens.”
It was Sarkisian’s final availability of the week. He opened it by crediting both programs for a week in which college football talked about a football game.
“What an exciting time for college football,” Sarkisian said. “The fact that this week we’ve talked about college football and a game as opposed to lawsuits and TROs and injunctions and everything else, I think that’s a credit to both programs.”
Ohio State is 1-0 after a 56-3 win over Ball State. Texas is 1-0 after a 59-7 win over Texas State. The Buckeyes are No. 1 in the AP Top 25 and No. 1 in the US LBM Coaches Poll. Texas is No. 4 in the AP and No. 3 in the coaches poll.
Steve Sarkisian On The Audience For Texas-Ohio State
Earlier in the week, Sarkisian put a figure on how many people he expects to watch.
“I bet there’s close to 20 million people that watch this game,” Sarkisian said. “That’s pretty cool when you think about it.”
Sarkisian said the eyes of the sporting world will be on DKR.
“I think it is phenomenal, not only for our program, but for the entire University of Texas and for the city of Austin,” Sarkisian told reporters, in comments reported by KXAN.
Saturday will be the third Texas-Ohio State meeting in 20 months and the first in Austin since 2006. Ohio State won that 2006 game 24-7 in a matchup of the top two teams in the country.
Steve Sarkisian On Ryan Day And The Two Rosters
Ohio State coach Ryan Day has been the head coach in Columbus since 2019. Sarkisian, in his sixth season at Texas, put the two programs side by side when he was asked about the matchup.
“Obviously we’ve touched on earlier in the week just the job that Ryan Day has done with that program at Ohio State since he’s taken over, the amount of success that he’s had, the amount of players that have gone on to the NFL, the roster that he’s assembled this year to go along with the coaching staff that he’s assembled, and we feel the same way about our program,” Sarkisian said.
“The players we’re producing into the NFL, this roster that we’ve assembled, this coaching staff that we’ve assembled, I think both programs have garnered the attention,” Sarkisian added.
Ohio State beat Texas 28-14 in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Cotton Bowl in January 2025, then won 14-7 in Columbus in last season’s opener. Sarkisian is 0-2 against the Buckeyes.
Kickoff at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium is 6:30 p.m. CT on ABC. Ohio State will make a record 69th appearance on “College GameDay” on Saturday morning.
