Clemson-Texas Matchup Showcases Everything New in College Football

AUSTIN — The postgame press conference of Texas’ playoff win over Clemson Saturday had an unusual visitor: a representative from the Peach Bowl.

The official had traveled to Texas Memorial Stadium to offer the Longhorns a formal invitation to the New Year’s Six bowl game, which will serve as a quarterfinal matchup in the new 12-team College Football Playoff.

The presentation was one of many new ceremonies of the expanded Playoff format, which has brought a slew of firsts to college football this year. The Clemson-Texas game—as well as the entire weekend of on-campus first-round games—was a result of everything that’s new about the sport, from the playoff format to new conference affiliations.

The new CFP format is the most obvious change this year. Texas was one of four schools to host first-round games this weekend; CFP games had never been on campuses before. The New Year’s Six bowls will make up the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds, and the national championship will be played at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. 

“What an environment for college football this was,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian told reporters after the game. “From the moment that we pulled up on the buses… you could feel the energy. The crowd was tremendous, it was a great atmosphere. I think college football got this one right.”

The Clemson-Texas matchup itself, which ended with a decisive final score of 38–24, was a first: the Tigers and Longhorns had never before met in their illustrious histories. Texas was representing the SEC in the postseason for the first time, three years after the Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners made a blockbuster decision in 2021 to leave the Big 12. The move has set off three years of conference realignment dominoes that ended with a stripped-down Pac-12 and only four power conferences. (While Clemson hasn’t participated in this realignment wave, it has certainly tried. The school filed a lawsuit against the ACC in March over whether it would be bound to nine-figure exit fees if it left the league before its media deal expired in 2036.)

The game was even on a new network. For the first time, TNT broadcast the matchup, thanks to a sublicensing agreement with ESPN for two first-round games.

Before kickoff on Saturday, there were two dead giveaways that the Clemson-Texas matchup at Texas Memorial Stadium was anything other than a regular-season home game. 

The first tell: the Longhorns had to play a hype video for the visiting team that was preceded by a warning on the jumbotron that the video may not be “suitable” for Texas fans, who promptly booed the entire thing. The second: the game was on Dec. 21—the first time that the Longhorns had hosted a contest this late in the calendar year and after campus had closed for the semester. (The weather was a temperate 62 degrees and sunny at kickoff, regardless.)

But for all the novelty, the game’s look and feel was that of a home game, Texas senior associate AD for external affairs Drew Martin told Front Office Sports in an interview on Friday. 

The Longhorns had received approval from the CFP to run all their usual pregame festivities, from a free outdoor concert to a carnival-esque street fair as most of the student tailgating takes place further away from the stadium. Even as early as four hours before game time, families roamed the grounds, with kids playing at a bounce house, a slide, and even a zip-line. And inside, the stadium had all its usual pregame festivities: The Texas band marched across the field; and the Longhorns played a hype video and fired off burnt orange fireworks into the air, leaving a trail of smoke above the stadium. Superfan Matthew McConaughey meandered the sidelines in a brown jacket, aviator sunglasses, and a cowboy hat. 

Unlike a neutral site game, there was no sense of equity between fan bases. The Tigers athletic department only received 3,500 tickets—many fewer than the 50–50 split they would have received had this been a bowl game. Texas fans joked with Clemson fans, clad in purple and orange, with one Texas fan stopping to ask a Clemson fan where the team was even from. Most of the Tigers’ contingent looked to be sitting in one corner of the stadium, recognizable to the naked eye by their purple and bright-orange outfits.

But the brief Peach Bowl presentation reminded everyone that the game was anything but normal. Next, on Jan. 1, Texas will take on yet another conference newcomer: Arizona State of the Big 12.