Steve Sarkisian has no concrete plans for Championship Weekend.
His Texas Longhorns are likely not part of the program but the self admitted college football junkie will be in front of a television instead of on a sideline.
“I’ll probably watch it at the house, begrudgingly,” he said at Wednesday’s media availability introducing the new recruiting class. “As the competitor inside of me, I wish we were playing Saturday but I’m not going to apologize for going 6-2 in the SEC with arguably the hardest schedule.”
The Horns moved up three spots in the latest College Football Playoff rankings. The CFP door is cracked slightly, but there’s a luxury liner pushed up against the other side with a sturdy Ottoman right behind it for backup.
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That door ain’t moving, Longhorn Nation. Even so, it’s OK to hope even if the answer is nope.
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) give Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian the game ball after beating Texas A&M Aggies 27-17 during the NCAA college football game in the Lone Star Showdown in Austin, Texas, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman
This is dire, despite Texas rising from 16th to 13th after smacking the playoff-bound Texas A&M Aggies, who dropped four spots from third to seventh, safely in the playoff field. Sarkisian has made the national radio and TV rounds and his stumped for his team’s case and who can blame him? We’ll see if it’s falling on deaf ears since it’s coming from the coach of a 9-3 team.
MORE CEDDY: How the College Football Playoff bracket should look
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Texas knew long before the A&M game that it would need to finish 10th at minimum to qualify for the 12-team tournament since the committee has to make room for five conference champions. The Big Ten, SEC and Big 12 are all locked in, assuming No. 4 Texas Tech doesn’t slide more than six spots if it loses in the Big 12 title game to No. 11 BYU.
The 29-21 Florida loss was a killer, but the 35-10 Georgia beatdown that included a 21-0 fourth-quarter savaging not-so-quietly dropped the Horns from 10th to 17th in the CFP rankings and it was just too much ground to make up even after the Black Friday spanking of unbeaten Texas A&M with everybody watching young quarterback Arch Manning help secure the biggest win of the season.
Texas Longhorns quarterback Arch Manning (16) runs into the end zone for a score against Texas A&M Aggies during the second half of an NCAA college football game in the Lone Star Showdown in Austin, Texas, Friday, Nov. 28, 2025.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman
Longhorns playoff hopes: Not a pretty picture
Texas must feel like a beauty pageant contestant whose name is called a few mentions before the actual winner.
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Remember Wanda Geddie? Of course you don’t, unless you’re a pageant follower or hail from her home state of Mississippi. Geddie finished as the third runner-up — that’s fourth place in English — at the 1984 Miss America competition. Those of us who were teenage boys at the time remember the fetching Vanessa Williams winning the crown at which it was announced that runner-up Suzette Charles would assume the title if Miss Williams was somehow unable to fulfill her pageantry duties.
As it turns out, Charles did ascend to the throne after Penthouse magazine purchased and published — without her consent — nude photos of Williams. Those revelations led to Vanessa being, um, stripped, of the crown.
Oh for Texas to be Suzette (No. 11 BYU) because there is a slightly improved chance of moving up to 10th if the committee sees fit to push out the Irish if certain things happen inside the top 10.
MORE CEDDY: Why Texas should end nonconference marquee matchups in the future
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“Indeed, idle teams can move following the results of the championship games and how they impact the teams that are around, those that play in the championship game, and data such as strength of scheduled teams that may be idle,” CFP committee chairman Hunter Yurachek said during ESPN’s CFP show. “So yes, teams that are idle can move up or down.”
Texas’ only hope is for No. 3 Georgia to put the beating of a lifetime on No. 9 Alabama in the SEC title game and for No. 4 Texas Tech to do the same to BYU at Jerry World. The committee would then have to decide if the SEC runner-up should move out of the top 10 in favor of the Canes, who are third in the ACC — Miami is idle and staring at the possibility of missing the playoffs despite consecutive 10-2 seasons — and possibly the Horns, who tied for fifth in the SEC but beat three top-10 teams and lost only 14-7 to current No. 1 Ohio State.
You will get no argument from Sarkisian when it comes to the five conference champions, whom he calls “deserving.
And that’s where the agreements end.
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“We are one of the best seven teams remaining,” he said.
I’m still picturing a showdown between No. 7 Texas A&M hosting No. 10 Texas in the first round at a raucous Kyle Field.
As Vanessa sang years after PenthouseGate: “I’ll be dreamin’.”
The song peaked at No. 13 on the 1989 US Billboard chart.
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So how does it all end?
It’s not happening, friends. Yurachek, when asked about Texas’ plight on a conference call after the show, echoed the sentiment of 99.9% of people following this saga.
“It’s not that Texas lost to Ohio State,” he said. “It is that Texas lost to Florida that’s holding them back.”
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MORE HORNS: Who Texas football landed on National Signing Day
It doesn’t help Texas’ cause, but expansion is coming and it can’t come soon enough because we’re staring at the possibility of the Tulane-North Texas winner and No. 25 James Madison giving the Group of Five two playoff teams, made possible if 7-5 and unranked Duke upsets No. 17 Virginia.
Texas is all out of options and soon we will turn our discussion to the Citrus Bowl, the likely bowl destination.
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As the door to the CFP remains cracked, Longhorn Nation is in need of a Championship Weekend miracle.