Texas’ Steve Sarkisian needs to stop with this empty threat about scheduling | Opinion
Steve Sarkisian’s noble attempt to threaten the sport of college football is the 4-year-old who promises to stay awake all night to meet Santa Claus.
The Texas coach wants everyone to know he won’t schedule big time nonconference opponents if his team is not invited to the College Football Playoff. His future nonconference schedule already includes dates with Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame twice and Arizona State twice. This runs through 2033.
The chances that Sarkisian will be Texas’ head coach in 2033 are about as high as the chances he’ll cancel any of these nonconference games.
It’s the first week of December, which means we are in the middle of campaign season for college football coaches. Part of the unwritten job description of a major college football coach is projectile whining.
In the latest CFP rankings released on Tuesday night, Texas is No. 13.
The moment after Texas’ win over Texas A&M on Friday night in Austin, Sark was a heat-seeking missile to any microphone. In lobbying for his team, Sark is doing his job. And he does have some salient points about his team’s worthiness of a playoff spot.
The threat of altering his future nonconference schedule is not one of them. Because he’s not going to do it.
Why Steve Sarkisian is threatening to change Texas’ schedules
Sark’s logic is that his team should be rewarded, rather than punished, for playing at Ohio State to start the season. He’s not entirely wrong.
UT is the only team that has come remotely close to defeating Ohio State. The Buckeyes won that game, 14-7. Ohio State has won every other game by at least double digits in one of the most boring seasons ever assembled by a major program.
“I just don’t think either us or Ohio State for that matter, is going to get punished for playing in this game from a CFP standpoint,” Sarkisian said before the start of the season.
Who suggested this would happen?
Sark has repeatedly said this week that if Texas is not included in the playoff, then there is no incentive to schedule a game against Ohio State, Michigan, or any threatening opponent.
“We’ve played five top-10 ranked teams,” he said on ESPN’s SEC Network this week. “If we’re just staring at a record, we’ve got to put ourselves in a better position to get a better record.”
Four of those top-10 games were SEC games, which is a result of power-conference consolidation, which is a money grab. The latter of which is why Texas won’t be changing its future nonconference schedules.
CFP chair Hunter Yurachek told ESPN on Tuesday night that UT’s loss to Ohio State had zero bearing on its ranking. Its 29-21 loss at a Florida team that finished 4-8 is the killer.
Texas’ schedule threat is empty talk
Maybe 25 years ago, Sark’s ultimatum would have two arms, two legs and a set of fangs. Today, the threat has the power of a toothless man who wants to eat a 22-ounce ribeye.
One of the reasons why TheBigSEC10 shot their brothers and sisters in the Big 12 and murdered the Pac-12 by grabbing USC, UCLA, Washington, Oregon, Texas and Oklahoma are stadiums that are built for a different era of entertainment. There are dozens of college football teams, many in these conferences, that play in venues that are too big for anything other than Big versus Big.
No one understands this reality better than Sark’s boss, UT athletic director Chris Del Conte. When UT was in the Big 12, he was the man who scheduled home-and-home series with Georgia and Florida.
Since UT is in the SEC, those no longer apply. The need for one attractive nonconference game in which the home team can charge a premium price, however, still exists. The best chance to fill an 80,000-person venue these days is to have Ohio State play Texas. Or Michigan at Oklahoma. Texas A&M vs. Notre Dame. Florida State vs. Alabama.
San Jose State at Texas may “sell out,” but there will likely be empties. At halftime, fans will file out to the tailgate or the bar.
The TV networks that essentially fund these athletic departments with eight-figure media rights deals do so not for Texas vs. Kentucky, but for Texas vs. Ohio State or Texas vs. Michigan.
When it comes to a playoff invite, Sark threatening to pull out of these types of games has merit. When it comes to the bigger picture of college football, it has none.
This era of college sports is defined by the need for more revenue, which makes Sark’s rants sound like a toddler who hasn’t learned Santa Claus isn’t real.
This story was originally published December 2, 2025 at 12:26 PM.
