Arch Manning is the No. 1 trending topic in the country on Saturday night, and the reason is impossible to miss: No. 5 Texas hosts No. 1 Ohio State in Austin, a rematch of the season-opening loss that has shadowed Manning since last August. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC, and every eye in college football is on whether the Longhorns quarterback can finally beat the team that beat him first.
Manning enters his first true test of the 2026 season fresh off a dominant Week 1 showing, when he threw for 305 yards and four touchdowns on 20-of-27 passing in a 59-7 rout of Texas State. He connected twice with new transfer Cam Coleman and added scores to Ryan Wingo and Daylan Smothers before exiting in the third quarter with Texas already up 42-7. It capped a full offseason of anticipation for the grandson of Archie Manning and nephew of Peyton and Eli, who took over as Texas’ full-time starter last year and closed the 2025 season with 3,163 passing yards, 26 touchdowns and Citrus Bowl MVP honors in a win over Michigan.
The Ghost of Last Year’s Opener
The story tonight, though, isn’t the blowout against Texas State — it’s what happened the last time Manning and Ohio State shared a field. In last season’s opener in Columbus, the Buckeyes beat Texas 14-7 in what was Manning’s first career start at quarterback. He finished 17-of-30 for 170 yards and a touchdown, but a third-quarter interception flipped field position and led directly to an Ohio State score, costing the Longhorns their preseason No. 1 ranking in the process.
That result has followed Manning for a full calendar year, and college football analyst Paul Finebaum made the stakes explicit ahead of tonight’s rematch. “I hate to come down on Arch, but he has to have a monster game because that game last year still shadows him a little bit,” Finebaum said on ESPN’s “Get Up,” adding that Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has told him the loss “probably helped Arch Manning more than any other game” in his development. Manning’s own coaching staff and the fanbase largely agree that everything since — the reps, the growth, the Citrus Bowl performance — has built toward answering for that night in Columbus.
What’s at Stake in Austin
Beyond the personal narrative, tonight’s game carries real national title implications. Ohio State enters as the reigning standard-bearer at No. 1, while Texas is looking to prove last season’s freshman-quarterback growing pains are behind it. Bettors have already piled onto the matchup, with Manning’s passing and rushing props among the most heavily bet on the board — a sign of just how much attention this specific rematch has drawn. Fans tracking the live college football odds have watched the number move throughout the week as the market weighs Ohio State’s defense against a more experienced Manning and a deeper group of skill-position playmakers around him.
Manning has already made headlines once this month for reasons that had nothing to do with football: before the Texas State opener, a fan reached out and grabbed his throwing arm as he ran through the pregame tunnel, sending him to the ground in front of a trailing TV camera. He popped back up unhurt and laughed it off with reporters days later, joking that it helped him “get locked in” before kickoff. It was a strange footnote to an otherwise clean debut, but it added to the wall-to-wall attention that has followed him into Week 2.
Now the focus shifts entirely to what happens between the lines. A win over the top-ranked Buckeyes would validate everything Texas has built around Manning since last year’s loss and put the Longhorns squarely in the College Football Playoff conversation from the opening weeks of the season. Another defeat would reignite the exact questions Finebaum and others have been asking all offseason. Either way, Arch Manning is about to have the biggest night of his college career so far, live in front of a full house at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium and a national audience watching to see if he’s ready to shed last year’s shadow for good.
