{"id":75050,"date":"2025-12-03T23:35:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75050\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T23:35:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T23:35:11","slug":"texas-coach-steve-sarkisian-leaves-door-open-for-3-loss-longhorns-to-start-scheduling-lesser-power-conference-opponents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/75050\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas coach Steve Sarkisian leaves door open for 3-loss Longhorns to start scheduling lesser power conference opponents"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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\u2019s highly, highly unlikely Texas will sneak into the 12-team playoff field.<\/p>\n

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\u2019 three losses came to No. 1 Ohio State in Week 1. The Buckeyes beat the Longhorns 14-7 in what\u2019s been OSU\u2019s closest win of the season.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Texas and Sarkisian want more credit for scheduling that game. And the Longhorns could be willing to adjust their scheduling philosophy if they don\u2019t feel they get that credit.<\/p>\n

During his early signing period news conference Wednesday, Sarkisian was asked about the team\u2019s 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 for Texas to change its schedule after that.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s layers to this, bear with my answer,\u201d Sarkisian said. \u201cFirst of all, we\u2019re going to honor Ohio State and Michigan. We went to Ann Arbor, we went to Columbus, we\u2019re 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\u2019s the right thing to do. We made the commitment to play them, now we\u2019ll honor that commitment for them to come play us here.<\/p>\n

I think for anything beyond that is up for discussion. We need to \u2014 and [athletic director Chris Del Conte] and I have already had that discussion \u2014 we need to take a good hard look at what our non-conference schedule looks like beyond the next two years. Because you\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n

Well there\u2019s a little bit of a different shift now that we\u2019re in the Southeastern Conference. And another shift now that we\u2019re going to nine conference games. And so we\u2019ve got to be mindful of, one, putting our players in the best position to have success and to have growth, two, we\u2019ve got to be mindful of how the committee\u2019s going to evaluate to put the best teams into the College Football Playoff.<\/p>\n

Now the goal is to go win the Southeastern Conference every year. And when you do that you don\u2019t have to worry about what the record looks like and you probably have a good record if you\u2019re 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\u2019ve expanded to 12 games. They care about your record. And so we\u2019ve got to be mindful of that as we go and we\u2019ll see what that looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t 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\u2019s no guarantee that whoever would replace Notre Dame wouldn\u2019t be good at the time or that another team would even be willing to schedule Texas in the first place knowing the Longhorns would, ostensibly, be looking for an easier game.<\/p>\n

And besides, the Ohio State loss isn\u2019t what\u2019s 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\u2019s an October defeat to a 4-8 Florida team. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe committee has a great deal of respect for Texas and they\u2019ve played an incredible schedule,\u201d the Arkansas athletic director said. \u201cThey\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut one key stat this week in the teams ranked in our top 15, there\u2019s 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\u2019 loss to Florida at Florida. And really Florida dominated that game, held Texas to 50 yards rushing, two interceptions. So it\u2019s not that Texas played Ohio State; it is Texas\u2019 loss to Florida that\u2019s holding them back now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You likely know that three-loss Texas is all but out of the College Football Playoff. The No. 13…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[262,316,2470,37185,3129,3231,27,29,28,15828],"class_list":["post-75050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-college-football-playoff","tag-conference","tag-longhorns","tag-non-conference-schedule","tag-ohio-state","tag-steve-sarkisian","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-the-longhorns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}