Joey McGuire goes full WWE, challenges Sark, Texas to Week 1 game at AT&T Stadium

In the six decades their schools played on an annual basis, at no point did the rank-and-file Texas fan ever harbor real, genuine hate for Texas Tech. Now that Texas is in the SEC and Joey McGuire has Texas Tech in the power chair in the Big 12, McGuire may have pulled it off. 

For context, last week Steve Sarkisian was speaking at a fan event in Houston and explained the College Football Playoff's strength-of-schedule metrics in light of the Longhorns missing the field at 9-3 a year ago. "There's a team in our state that plays in another conference that has a schedule that I would argue if I played with our twos and our threes, we could go undefeated, and they'll probably make the CFP this year," Sarkisian said. 

Texas Tech was not named there, but we all know who he was talking about.

"There's no way they're talking us because Sark's a pretty tough guy, his teams are really tough, and I would think that if he was talking about us, he would call us out, right?" McGuire said Thursday, via CBS Sports. "Like he wouldn't just say this kind of comment of, well, there's another team in our state. Well, I guess he was talking about us." 

Rather than leave it at that, though, McGuire called each school's Week 1 opponents -- Abilene Christian for Texas Tech, Texas State for Texas -- and got them to agree to play each other so the Red Raiders and the Longhorns could meet on the field.

"We're willing to buy our contract out of ACU. I'm sure because Texas has got a lot of money, they can buy their contract out, but I do know there's a lot of Red Raiders that could help them buy that contract out if they don't want to, and they can come to Lubbock in Week 1 and figure out if their twos and threes can win this conference.

"I do know that [megabooster] Cody Campbell reached out to Stephen Jones, so if they don't want to come to Lubbock, then we're going to work on trying to get to AT&T Stadium," McGuire said. "So if they want to play Week 1, we're ready. We would love to play the University of Texas." 

Later, Campbell offered to cover both buyouts to make the game happen.

This is never going to happen, of course, and McGuire knows it. Texas hosts Ohio State in Week 2; Tech plays Oregon State. The Longhorns then play an SEC schedule with three of the league's five CFP teams from a year ago; Tech doesn't play any, because they were the Big 12's lone representative.

Sarkisian's original comment criticized Texas Tech's schedule, not the team. Texas fans will retort that it's suddenly become UT's burden to give Tech a marquee non-conference game, but the average college football fan won't care. They'll see it as Texas turning down an opportunity to play Texas Tech.

And in 60-plus years of annual games, it took the Texas-Texas Tech series going away for it to finally become heated on both sides.