Texas coach Steve Sarkisian says the College Football Playoff selection committee lacks transparency and could get worse with expansion.
Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian isn’t pretending college football’s problems are small. NIL money, transfer freedom, booster influence and roster bidding wars have changed the sport at warp speed.
But Sarkisian’s biggest issue isn’t with player movement or payrolls. It’s with the College Football Playoff selection committee.
Sarkisian said the sport has become exhausting to track, especially with players making “real money” and programs spending millions to build rosters. Texas is part of that new reality, but the Longhorns coach believes the playoff system remains one of the least transparent pieces of the sport.
“Everyone talks about NIL. But my biggest gripe is the selection committee,” Sarkisian said. “There’s no transparency on what exactly the committee is doing. We have to figure that out.”
That frustration is easy to understand after Texas missed the 2025 CFP. The Longhorns opened that season at defending national champion Ohio State, lost that game, then finished with three losses overall.
Sarkisian’s larger point is that not all losses should be weighed the same, especially when a team plays one of the toughest schedules in the country.
He noted that Texas was set to face five top-10 opponents among its 12 regular-season games. In his view, that kind of schedule should matter more than it often appears to.
The concern now is whether the committee’s process becomes even more inconsistent if the playoff expands. Sarkisian questioned whether members can realistically evaluate that many teams every week.
“The committee doesn’t have the bandwidth to watch that many games,” Sarkisian said.
“They see the media and coaches polls, and they copy them. You’ve got a 12-team playoff, and that means there are at least 30 teams that impact it. Now all of a sudden, you want to go to 24? Now the polls become an even greater factor, because now you’re asking (the committee) to watch 40 teams a week — if not 50.”
Texas has long scheduled aggressively, avoiding FCS opponents and taking on powers like Alabama, USC, Notre Dame and Ohio State. But if marquee nonconference games keep hurting playoff resumes, that philosophy may change.
The Longhorns still have Ohio State next season, Michigan in 2027 and Notre Dame scheduled for 2028. After that, everything sounds negotiable.
For Sarkisian, the message is clear: college football can keep changing, but the playoff process has to become clearer.
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