How a new era has changed stakes of Texas-Oklahoma rivalry

Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) runs the ball in the third quarter of the Longhorns’ game against the UTSA Roadrunners at Royal-Memorial Stadium in Austin, Sept. 19, 2026. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman)

In any other era, Oklahoma’s motivation this weekend at the State Fair in Dallas would have been simple.

Ruin Texas’ season.

There was a time, covering a century or so of college football history, when stuff like that was possible. An underachieving team could walk into the Cotton Bowl on the second weekend of October and massacre the dreams of a good one, and then two rivals could spend the next couple of months being miserable together.

But that won’t happen Saturday. It can’t anymore. And it’s not because the unranked Sooners aren’t capable of beating the No. 1 team in the country.

The Longhorns might lose the game. It’s just that in the age of a 12-team playoff, there’s little danger of them losing any more than that.

The stakes of early-autumn clashes aren’t what they used to be, and that’s true of rivalries without the words "Red River" in their nicknames. On the same day as OU and UT meet in Dallas, for instance, two of the most accomplished programs of the past two decades are set to meet in a huge showdown in Alabama, weather permitting.

And if the No. 6 Crimson Tide beat No. 2 Georgia, what will that get them in December? Maybe a first-round bye. Then again, the Bulldogs might lose Saturday and wind up with one of those, anyway.

This is part of the tradeoff that came with expanding the postseason, and if certain folks get their way, it’s going to become even more pronounced in years to come. As of Thursday afternoon, the College Football Playoff and ESPN were still in a 30-day negotiating window in which both sides were considering a 24-team format starting next year.

That negotiating window is set to expire Friday. And if those in charge do elect to double the current playoff field, either next season or beyond?

There will be two ways to look at it. On one hand, those mid-November matchups between three-loss Missouri and three-loss Texas A&M (or, possibly, between one-loss UTSA and one-loss North Texas) will mean more than they used to.

On the other, games like Texas-Oklahoma and Georgia-Alabama mean less than ever.

Texas running back Ryan Niblett (21) and Texas wide receiver Kohen Brown (13) celebrate after a kick return during the game against UTSA at Darrell K Royal?Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Sep. 19, 2026 in Austin. (Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman)

This isn’t to say they wouldn’t mean anything at all, or that they wouldn’t still be special. After all, people still enjoy watching the Seahawks play the Patriots and the Chiefs play the Bills during the NFL regular season, and none of those singular games have the ability to make or break a team’s championship hopes.

But the magnitude of mid-October (and of late September, and of early November, and of every week in the regular season) used to be part of college football’s appeal.

If a coach at either Oklahoma or Texas couldn’t win in Dallas, that sometimes was enough to not only wreck a season, but a career. No matter what happened at the Cotton Bowl, it felt like there were going to be ramifications.

But these days? Through his first four seasons as the Sooners’ head coach Brent Venables lost to the Longhorns three times. In all those defeats, his team failed to score a touchdown.

And even so, in the days leading up to this season’s opener, while bidding against no other apparent suitors, in a revenue-sharing, transfer-portal era in which long-term coaching contracts never have seemed less wise, Oklahoma extended Venables’ deal to pay him $63 million over the next six years.

Somewhere, Mack Brown and Gary Gibbs and Tom Herman and the spirits of countless other former coaches are wondering how Venables managed to pull that off. Weren’t they all held to the fire every time they made it look even for a second like the school on the other side of the Red River had an edge?

And now a guy who’s been embarrassed in that series over and over again gets a raise out of it?

Again, there’s a flip side to this. If Texas-Oklahoma doesn’t make or break a coach anymore, that means other parts of the season carry more importance than they used to.

But it’s still fun to pretend it’s like it used to be, and few settings preserve that illusion quite like the Cotton Bowl in October. And even if more than 90,000 people might know better, there will be moments when they trick themselves into feeling the same old desperation that comes from the same old stakes.

Then the Sooners can look at the bright side.

They might not be able to ruin the Longhorns’ season.

But they still can ruin their week.

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This article originally published at How a new era has changed stakes of Texas-Oklahoma rivalry.

Source: sports.yahoo.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.