Surprise, surprise.
No. 16 Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian is politicking for his Longhorns to make the College Football Playoff.
After taking down the undefeated No. 3 Texas A&M Aggies on Saturday, Sarkisian used his postgame press conference to advocate for his team to play beyond the regular season.
“I think we’re absolutely a playoff team,” Sarkisian told reporters. “… We’re the first team since the 2019 national champion LSU team to beat three top-10 ranked teams in the same season during the regular season. Let’s just chew on that for a second.”
The Longhorns improved to 9-3 with the win, but look likely to fall outside the playoff picture with so many two-loss or better teams above them in the rankings.
As Sarkisian mentioned, Texas has several impressive wins, beating Oklahoma and Vanderbilt before Friday’s victory.
Two of the Longhorns’ losses came against tough competition on the road, falling to the defending champion No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes and No. 4 Georgia Bulldogs.
Texas would likely be in the mix if that was all, but an upset loss to Florida, who is 3-8 heading into Saturday’s play, in early October, and dicey overtime wins over non-contenders Kentucky and Mississippi State, are hurting their resume.
Those games aren’t changing Sarkisian’s mind.
“We went on the road to Ohio State in Week 1 and lost to them on a one-score game when we had the ball at the end of the game and we out-gained them by nearly 200 yards,” Sarkisian said. “And no one else has been close to a one-score game against them. But I think more importantly, it’s the message that, what do we want to send to the head coaches and the athletic directors across the country? Do you want us not to schedule Ohio State? Because if we’re a 10-2 team right now, this isn’t a discussion. We’re in the Playoff. But we were willing to go up there and play that game.”
“Now, when you play five Top-10 ranked teams in the regular season and you go 3-2, you beat three of them and you schedule an Ohio State out-of-conference play, I surely don’t think we want to punish us to do that because what are we all going to do?” he continued. “We’re all going to get out of those games – just like a lot of teams in the country have done. And they’ve got nice, pretty records right now. But they weren’t willing to go play these games out of conference. We’re willing to go play those games. I just hope we don’t get punished for doing that.”
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Dylan Svoboda is a versatile writer and analyst across many sports. He’s particularly knowledgeable about the big three — MLB, the NFL and the NBA.
