Steve Sarkisian is making the same point he made last year, only this time the target is Ohio State.
After Texas beat the Buckeyes 24-23 on Saturday night in Austin, Sarkisian used his Monday press conference to argue that the loss should help, not hurt, Ohio State when the College Football Playoff committee starts sorting things out later in the season.
“I hope Ohio State doesn't get punished for playing that game Saturday night,” Sarkisian said. “They played a heck of a game.
It's 24-23. They lose with us scoring with 25 seconds left to go in the game.
I hope, if they end up being a 9-3 team, that the (Playoff selection) committee can appreciate that they came to Austin, Texas, in September when it was 100 degrees and played us in that environment and played a heck of a game. They should not be punished.”
It was a notable stance coming from the same coach who spent the back end of last season arguing Texas belonged in the Playoff even after a three-loss regular season. At the time, he questioned why the Longhorns should have gone to Columbus if that game wasn’t going to help their postseason case.
Saturday’s game looked like it might belong to Ohio State for a long stretch. The Buckeyes led 20-3 at halftime and stretched that margin to 20 points with a little more than eight minutes left in the third quarter. But Texas closed hard, leaning on a tired Ohio State defense and ripping off 21 unanswered points before scoring the winning touchdown with 25 seconds left.
Sarkisian mostly talked about the comeback after the game. On Monday, though, he turned his attention to the bigger scheduling question and doubled down on his belief that marquee nonconference games should be treated as a positive, not a liability.
“Quite frankly, Ohio State should be rewarded for playing in this type of game against us,” Sarkisian said.
That concern lines up with what he said a year ago: if the sport starts punishing teams for taking these kinds of risks, those games could disappear.
“Everybody loves those matchups,” Sarkisian said. “Well, if we want to continue with those matchups, we've got to reward the teams for playing in those games ... because if they don't reward them for playing in the game, then all of us start playing FCS, (Group of) 6 and then I don't think that's the product that we want in college football... If we want to continue those matchups, we gotta reward the teams for playing in those games.”
Ohio State still has a lot of football left to sort out its own Playoff case. The Buckeyes have road games remaining at No.
18 Iowa, No. 4 Indiana and No.
12 USC. No.
21 Oregon visits Ohio Stadium in early November, and No. 19 Michigan comes in on rivalry week.
The Buckeyes have already finished this home-and-home with Texas, but more big nonconference tests are on the calendar, with Alabama set for 2027 and 2028 and Georgia following in 2030 and 2031. Athletic director Ross Bjork has said he wants Ohio State to keep playing those games, even though every athletic director is still trying to give his team the best possible path to a national championship.
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The bigger point behind the ballot was consistency, with the ranking change calibrated against how other top teams looked in Week 1. A narrow road loss to a top-ranked opponent did not carry the same weight as shakier performances elsewhere, which is why the Buckeyes stayed near the top instead of tumbling further down the poll. [Read more 🡒]