Texas Longhorns meeting Michigan Wolverines in regular season first

One of the highly anticipated Week 2 college matchups will feature the Texas Longhorns and Michigan Wolverines. When coach Steve Sarkisian made a guest appearance on ‘The Herd with Colin Cowherd’, he appreciated the occasion. The coach acknowledged how special the game will be and how unlikely it is that he would be on the sidelines for this matchup. These are two storied programs. This makes it that much more amazing that the two schools are only meeting for the first time in the regular season. 

Setting aside the historical aspect of this, there are a lot of potential implications for this year. It’s the reshuffling of the two major conferences. Furthermore, the Big 10 and SEC have something of an eye-for-eye rivalry. Meaning, any time teams from these conferences match up, the conference narratives are a large part of the discourse. This is a Sherrone Moore team that is looking to reset expectations and standing after a successful run last year. However, the first-year man in charge has a lot of responsibility, particularly with all of the off-field noise that surrounds Ann Arbor. Meanwhile, Texas aims to build on last year’s success and make some noise in their new SEC home.

‘The Big House’ will undoubtedly live up to the name, and the stadium atmosphere will carry the significance of this game. But looking at the positional battles, it’s understandable why many are expecting this epic one-off to become an ugly blowout. For coach Sark, his team is loaded with talent on both sides. They have Quinn Ewers proving to be one of the better quarterbacks in the nation. The team and offense will go through his arm talent.

Also, from the defensive line to the secondary, these are well-rounded units, including Anthony Hill Jr. The linebacker is an example of the talent that has been developing for years in Austin, improving on the highly recruited talent. This is one of the top teams, and they have legitimate college football title hopes.

What happens with a Texas Longhorns loss

Playing a game on the road is tough, but considering where the two rosters are, it makes sense for people to expect the Texas Longhorns to handle and control this one from the start. Unfortunately, a close win would still be seen as something of a loss. Most expect the home team to largely struggle this year for a couple of reasons. For one, there has been a talent exodus, and their prior head coach, who has served as the CEO for multiple years, is now with the Los Angeles Chargers. 

With this in mind, the biggest discrepancy is at the QB position. Between Alex Orji and Davis Warren, the options aren’t great, and even if Arch Manning is forced into the action, it’s a complete positional mismatch. Last season, they were able to overcome non-elite quarterback play through their run play and offensive line. However, this advantage will be with coach Sarkisian. For the great offensive weapons, the enhanced attention to both lines will give them an advantage most weeks, but particularly for this road game. 

An upset by Michigan would be one of the bigger shocks in college football in recent memory. Particularly with some of the upsets that fans have already seen this year, this would be something to cause seismic shifts for the playoff picture. The fact that these two haven’t faced each other in a regular season before may be emphasized heading in. But if the Texas Longhorns lose, any preseason thoughts that usually need to be instantly cast away following the first kickoff anyway would need to be completely rewritten.