No. 16 Texas pulled off a big upset on Friday night, handing No. 3 Texas A&M its first loss of the season, 27-17. It was a very exciting victory that featured plenty of big moments, including a few from the young Arch Manning. The win also keeps Texas’s incredibly slim College Football Playoff hopes alive. Barely. But alive.
Texas will now finish the season with a 9-3 record. The Longhorns aren’t eligible to play in the SEC championship game for an automatic playoff spot but they now have a case to claim one of the at-large bids. It took Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian no time at all to start lobbying for a CFP berth.
Speaking to ESPN on the field in the immediate aftermath of his team’s big win over A&M, Sarkisian made an impassioned plea that Texas belongs in the College Football Playoff and to leave the Longhorns out would be a “disservice” to the sport.
“I think this: if you really look at the body of work,” Sarkisian said when asked what kind of statement he believed the win made to the CFP committee. “If you look at the Southeastern Conference and what we have to go through every week. You look at the non-conference schedule we played, to go to Ohio State in Week 1 and lose by seven when we outgain them by nearly 200 yards, we have a really good football team. It would be a disservice to our sport if this team’s not a playoff team when we went and scheduled that non-conference game.
“Because if we’re a 10-2 team, it’s not a question. But we were willing to play that game. So is that what college football is about? Don’t play anybody and just have a good record? Or play the best and put the best teams in the playoff? And we’re one of the best teams.”
"It would be a disservice to our sport if this team is not a playoff team."
— ESPN (@espn) November 29, 2025
Steve Sarkisian made his case for why No. 16 Texas should be in the College Football Playoff 😤 pic.twitter.com/bMjcBv5waf
It’s a strong argument and will be debated at length until the CFP field is decided. Sarkisian has a point about Texas’s willingness to go and play in Columbus against Ohio State when many of their SEC counterparts would rather schedule an easy win for Week 1. But his detractors will contend that the win-loss column doesn’t lie and if Texas wanted to make its case as bulletproof as possible, the Longhorns should have won more games.
Either way it’s undeniable at this point that Sarkisian’s squad can play against anybody. Nobody has played the Buckeyes as fiercely as Texas did in Week 1. Breaking Texas A&M’s hearts on the eve of the SEC championship by handing the Aggies their first loss of the year is another notch in the belt for Sarkisian and Manning.
Will it be enough? That will be one of the big questions exiting Thanksgiving weekend about the College Football Playoff. First, though, there are plenty of fun games still yet to be played on Saturday that will have their own ramifications on the College Football Playoff race.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Steve Sarkisian Makes Passionate Case for Texas to Make CFP After Upsetting Texas A&M.
