According to Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, Donald Trump played a part in the outcome of the 2026 College Football Playoff championship game. Just one problem: Indiana coach Curt Cignetti says it didn’t happen.
The topic came up because President Donald Trump will attend the Texas-Tennessee game in Knoxville on Saturday. Steve Sarkisian has been through that sort of thing before. When President Trump visited Tuscaloosa on November 9, 2019, to watch the Crimson Tide play LSU during his first term in office, Sarkisian was Alabama’s offensive play-caller.
This week, Sarkisian revealed that if President Trump changes location, communication may abruptly cease. That could include him arriving late, leaving early, using the restroom, or any other sort of movement.
“So, you have to have a plan for that, if and or when it happens and you don’t get any warning. It just cuts out. So, you have to have a plan for that and adjust,” Sarkisian said.
Did Donald Trump’s presence affect the title game between Indiana and Miami?
Steve Sarkisian also claimed that he was told that President Trump being at the College Football Playoff championship game negatively affected the Miami Hurricanes.
“A good friend of mine is Mario Cristobal,” he told the Longhorn Network, referring to Miami’s head coach. “Last year, when they were playing Indiana in the national championship, they had that drive at the end of the game; they had no communications because he was leaving early before the game ended. You get no warning; it just cuts out. You have to be prepared for that.”
While Sarkisian’s claim has been supported by a number of publications, CBS Sports reported that it was “only a play or two” and didn’t “significantly alter the outcome.”
Curt Cignetti kills the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump cost Miami
Another person who disagreed with Steve Sarkisian’s claim had a direct line to those communications during the CFP Championship: Indiana Hoosiers head coach Curt Cignetti.
“Okay, so there’s something spreading like wildfire on social media, right?” Cignetti said on Thursday. “That when the President leaves that communications devices go out. The headsets. I mean, that’s a fact. That happens.
“And when President Trump left the game around the seven-minute mark of the fourth quarter, there were two or three plays, we were on defense, we couldn’t hear at all. And the second play was when they gave the ball to Toney, pitched it to him on the fly sweep for the touchdown with 6:37 to go.
“Well, what’s floating around on social media is, right, that the communication device went down on Miami’s last drive of the game on offense,” Cignetti continued. “Oh really? Yeah, so I had to dispel that.
“And these are just facts. They’re facts. And the communication device came back right after the touchdown and we had no problem … we had no problem the rest of the game. So, so what do we got? We got a bunch of B.S. That’s what we got.”