No Texas Tech, consecutive true road games highlight BYU's 2026 football schedule

PROVO — The embers had barely cooled on Indiana's celebratory cigar on the first 16-0 season in modern college football history (and first since Yale in 1896, if you're counting) when Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark flipped the page to next fall.

Can BYU, which finished the season ranked No. 11 in the final Associated Press Top 25 and its first 12-win campaign in 24 years, continue its upward trajectory?

Those questions will be answered soon enough.

The Cougars' path back to the Big 12 football championship game — which will move to Friday, Dec. 4 at 6 p.m. MST from its usual spot Saturday at 11 a.m. local in Arlington, Texas — doesn't include defending league champion Texas Tech, the only team to beat BYU in 2025 (and the Red Raiders did it twice).

That means any potential tilt with Texas Tech, which last played at BYU in 2023 when the Cougars won 27-14, would only come if both teams repeated in their collision at Jerry's World, also known as AT&T Stadium or the home of the Dallas Cowboys.

BYU also won't face Colorado, Kanas State, Houston, Oklahoma State and West Virginia in league play. Only three of the Cougars' 2026 opponents finished 2025 inside the top 25: No. 10 Notre Dame, No. 14 Utah and No. 25 TCU (Arizona also received votes).

But while the Red Raiders — who also won't face Utah in 2026 in following the conference's scheduling matrix — will be dealing with a pesky Week 7 matchup against Arizona State, BYU will face a few land mines in its third season of power-conference football.

For instance, there's a cross-country trip to UCF, a program that has been as constant of a date with BYU as any other this side of Utah joining the league and rekindling the in-state, intraconference rivalry series.

The Oct. 24 trip to the newly named Acrisure Bounce House will be the first since BYU's 37-24 win in Orlando back on Oct. 26, 2024, and follows a 41-21 home win in last year's regular-season finale Nov. 29.

After opening Sept. 5 against FCS newcomers Utah Tech, the Cougars will open Big 12 play a week later against Arizona before a Sept. 19 trip to first-year Pac-12 school Colorado State.. The move makes space for an Oct. 17 home tilt against Notre Dame, marking the Fighting Irish's first trip to LaVell Edwards Stadium since 2004.

BYU will only play back-to-back road games once, traveling to TCU on Saturday, Oct. 3 following the nonconference tilt in Fort Collins.But even that stay away from home will be broken up by the Cougars' lone bye week in Week 4.

That's also made possible by an unbalanced schedule of seven home games with five true road tilts, including four road games in conference play — a reversal of last year's nine-game Big 12 slate.

The toughest road trips include that Oct. 3 trip to TCU, and the regular-season road finale Nov. 21 at Kansas.

And of course, there's that aforementioned in-state rivalry series on Saturday, Nov. 7 at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Last year's 3-point win in Provo set the stage for the Cougars' run to the Big 12 championship. Will 2026 lead to the same fate in Morgan Scalley's first year as the Utes' head coach?

Little is guaranteed in the biggest rivalry in the Beehive State, and likely the most underrated in the nation, except for this: expect a close game in a series where 12 of the last 21 meetings have been decided by a touchdown or less.

But Cougars return every eligible starter from the end of the season on last year's 12-2 team, including quarterback Bear Bachmeier and Big 12 offensive player of the year LJ Martin on offense and linebacker Isaiah Glasker and cornerbacks Tre Alexander and Evan Johnson on defense, among others.

They also have commitments from former Cal linebacker Cade Uluave, the former Mountain Ridge High two-way star who was rated the No. 1 linebacker in the transfer portal by 247Sports, and former USC four-star tight end Walker Lyons, to name a few.

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