Communication during the 2026 College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Miami and Indiana went dark for a stretch during Malachai Toney’s 22-yard touchdown, and Texas coach Steve Sarkisian says President Trump’s exit was the reason.
Sarkisian made the comments Thursday on On Texas Football, pointing to the disruption as something teams have to be ready for when the president leaves a game early.
“Last year, when they were playing Indiana in the national championship, [Miami] had that drive at the end of the game,” Sarkisian said to On Texas Football on Thursday. “They had no communications because [President Trump] was leaving early before the game ended.
You get no warning. It just cuts out, you have to be prepared for that.”
His remarks came after the White House confirmed to The Athletic on Wednesday that Trump will attend Saturday’s game between No. 1 Texas and No. 14 Tennessee in Knoxville, Tenn.
The account from Indiana coach Curt Cignetti was different. Speaking the same evening on the Indiana sports podcast Kirkwood & Dunn, Cignetti said the communication issue did not hit on Miami’s final offensive drive and pushed back hard on what he’d seen circulating online.
“What’s floating around on social media is that the communication device went down on Miami’s last drive of the game on offense,” Cignetti said.“I had to dispel that. The communication devices came back right after the touchdown and we had no problem on either side.”
Cignetti also told ESPN’s Pete Thamel that the headsets went down with roughly 6:45 left in the fourth quarter and affected a few defensive snaps for Indiana, including a 41-yard pass to Toney and the 22-yard score that pulled Miami within 24-21.
“We couldn’t hear [on the TD] then it came back,” Cignetti said. “It came back before kickoff. We both had communication from that point on.”
Sources inside Miami’s program gave CBS Sports a similar version of events. The timing varied a bit depending on the source, but each said the outage lasted only a couple of plays and didn’t meaningfully change the game.
What stayed consistent across those accounts was the cause: Trump’s departure briefly cut the communication devices.
That kind of interruption matters because teams rely on headsets to connect sideline coaches with assistants in the press box, and the system also feeds into the quarterback’s helmet and one defender’s helmet, usually a linebacker. When it goes out, everyone has to scramble and call things the old-fashioned way, with sideline coaches yelling in code.
In the end, though, the brief outage didn’t stop Indiana from finishing the job. Miami had the ball down 27-21 with less than two minutes left and reached the Indiana 41-yard line, but Carson Beck’s deep throw on first down was intercepted by Jamari Sharpe at the Hoosiers’ 14-yard line, sealing Indiana’s first national championship. Sarkisian also noted that he and Miami coach Mario Cristobal worked together under Nick Saban at Alabama, and he called Cristobal a “good friend.”
The Miami Hurricane reached out to the University for comment but has not received a response.
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