Texas coach Steve Sarkisian leaves door open for 3-loss Longhorns to start scheduling lesser power conference opponents

You likely know that three-loss Texas is all but out of the College Football Playoff.

The No. 13 Longhorns moved up in the penultimate playoff rankings on Tuesday night after their Black Friday win over previously-undefeated Texas A&M, but Texas is still three spots away from the final at-large spot in the rankings. And with Texas on the sidelines as Alabama and Georgia play for the SEC title on Saturday, it’s highly, highly unlikely that Texas will sneak into the 12-team playoff field.

After that win over A&M, Texas coach Steve Sarkisian made his case for why his 9-3 team should be in the field. One of the biggest reasons? That one of Texas’ three losses came to No. 1 Ohio State in Week 1. The Buckeyes beat the Longhorns 14-7 in what’s been OSU’s closest win of the season.

Texas and Sarkisian want more credit for scheduling that game. And the Longhorns could be willing to adjust their scheduling philosophy if they don’t feel they get that credit.

During his early signing period news conference on Wednesday, Sarkisian was asked about the team’s scheduling philosophy. Texas played at Michigan in 2024 and hosts the Buckeyes in 2026 before the Wolverines come to Austin in 2027. Those games are going to be played, but Sarkisian left the door open to Texas changing its schedule after that.

“There’s layers to this, bear with my answer,” Sarkisian said. “First of all, we’re going to honor Ohio State and Michigan. We went to Ann Arbor, we went to Columbus, we’re going to honor those return trips. So for the next two years we know what our non-conference schedule is going to look like and that’s the right thing to do. We made the commitment to play them, now we’ll honor that commitment for them to come play us here.

I think for anything beyond that is up for discussion. We need to — and [athletic director Chris Del Conte] and I have already had that discussion — we need to take a good hard look at what our non-conference schedule looks like beyond the next two years. Because you’ve got to remember, so much of the non-conference scheduling was when were in the Big 12 and these schedules were made when we were in the Big 12.

Well there’s a little bit of a different shift now that we’re in the Southeastern Conference. And another shift now that we’re going to nine conference games. And so we’ve got to be mindful of, one, putting our players in the best position to have success and to have growth, two, we’ve got to be mindful of how the committee’s going to evaluate to put the best teams into the College Football Playoff.

Now the goal is to go win the Southeastern Conference every year. And when you do that you don’t have to worry about what the record looks like and you probably have a good record if you’re in that game and winning it. But I also need to look at what the committee has shown me over the last two years since we’ve expanded to 12 games. They care about your record. And so we’ve got to be mindful of that as we go and we’ll see what that looks like.”

The SEC is moving to nine conference games in 2026 as schools will be required to schedule a power conference opponent in at least one of its three games. After Michigan in 2027, Texas has a home-and-home series with Notre Dame on the books through 2029 and Arizona State scheduled for 2032 and 2033.

You don’t have to read too far between the lines to see that Texas is at least raising the possibility of getting out of the Notre Dame series to schedule what could be a lesser power conference opponent to fulfill that obligation. However, there’s no guarantee that whoever would replace Notre Dame wouldn’t be good at the time or that another team would even be willing to schedule Texas in the first place knowing that the Longhorns would, ostensibly, be looking for an easier game.

And besides, the Ohio State loss isn’t what’s keeping Texas out of the playoff according to the committee. Tuesday night, CFP committee chair Hunter Yurachek was asked what loss was hurting Texas the most. And it’s an October defeat to a 4-8 Florida team. It’s easy to see how the Longhorns could be a spot or two higher and in actual playoff contention had they lost to Oklahoma instead of Florida.

“The committee has a great deal of respect for Texas and they’ve played an incredible schedule,” the Arkansas athletic director said. “They’ve got four teams they played in our top 10. They beat [Oklahoma] on a neutral field. They just beat Texas A&M at home this past weekend. They lost to No. 1 Ohio State and lost to No. 3 Georgia.”

“But one key stat this week in the teams ranked in our top 15, there’s 17 total losses for those teams. Sixteen of those losses came against teams that are currently ranked or have been ranked in our top 25 this year. The only loss to an unranked team was Texas’ loss to Florida at Florida. And really Florida dominated that game, held Texas to 50 yards rushing, two interceptions. So it’s not that Texas played Ohio State; it is Texas’ loss to Florida that’s holding them back now.”