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The Texas Longhorns have added a high-profile non-conference opponent for the 2019 and 2020 seasons, as the school announced on Thursday that the Horns will play two games against the LSU Tigers.
In 2019, LSU will come to Austin for a game on September 7 and Texas will return the favor in Baton Rouge on September 12 of the following year.
Texas had been scheduled to play Notre Dame in those seasons, but the Fighting Irish made a cancellation fee to get out of those games. The two high-profile programs will still meet in 2015 and 2016.
Texas and LSU have met 17 times on the football field with the Longhorns holding a 9-7-1 advantage. The first meeting, a 14-0 LSU win, came in 1896 in Baton Rouge. The last two meetings both came in the Cotton Bowl with the most recent being a 35-20 Longhorns win at the 2003 Cotton Bowl following the 2002 season. Texas holds a 7-1-1 series lead in games played in Austin, the last a 20-6 victory in 1954. LSU leads, 4-1, in Baton Rouge and, 2-1, at neutral sites.
With some of the star power gone from the Big 12 with the losses of Nebraska and Texas A&M, among other schools, the Horns have worked hard to schedule attractive non-conference match ups, a strategy made more necessary by the fact that some fans have complained about not having many appareling home games with the annual grudge match against Oklahoma happening in the Cotton Bowl every year.