Texas HC Steve Sarkisian sends blunt message about SEC’s nine-game conference schedule

Steve Sarkisian looked well beyond Saturday’s game against the Mississippi State Bulldogs during his weekly Zoom press conference on Thursday. His focus went to December, when the College Football Playoff selection committee will have to sort through a Southeastern Conference with no team left unbeaten in league play.

The No. 11 Texas Longhorns are 5-2 overall and 2-2 in the SEC. Back-to-back 27-24 losses to the unranked Oklahoma Sooners and Florida Gators came before last Saturday’s 34-27 win over the then-No. 7 Ole Miss Rebels. Across the league, every team has at least one conference loss. Only the Kentucky Wildcats (5-1) and Georgia Bulldogs (4-1) have fewer than two, while nine SEC programs sit in the AP Top 25.

The question put to Sarkisian was what the conference’s first nine-game schedule will do to its playoff chances.

“Well, I think from a coach’s perspective, and when I refer to coaches, I’m referring to the 16 head coaches in our conference, I think we all had some reservations about going to the ninth conference game for a variety of reasons. One is the obvious one: that’s one more game of the physical pounding that this league takes its toll on you with. The other reservation we had about the ninth game was that it’s eight more losses for our conference. Any way you slice it, it’s eight more losses. So if you are fortunate enough to be part of that discussion from the committee, how much is the committee going to value one more conference game in the SEC, right? What does that look like? Here we are, last week at the halfway mark of conference play, and every team already had a loss. There are really good teams with multiple losses already. How much value is going to be placed in that? I think that’s why we were so adamant about if we’re going to go to nine conference games, let’s go to nine when we expand. To some degree, we put the cart before the horse, but that’s OK,” Sarkisian said.

NEW: Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian says the SEC is cannibalizing itself with a nine-game conference schedule

“Any way you slice it, it’s eight more losses. So if you are fortunate enough to be part of that discussion from the committee, how much is the committee going to value one more conference game in the SEC, right?”

He added: “To some degree we put the cart before the horse.”

(h/t @InsideTexas)

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Why Sarkisian’s complaint comes down to timing

Months before the league voted, Sarkisian backed a ninth conference game for a reason specific to Texas.

“Granted, for us, I would love a ninth conference game, this year alone in particular, because one of our home games is in Dallas and we only get three home conference games,” Sarkisian told reporters at the SEC spring meetings in Destin, Florida, last year.

Texas was the designated home team for its 2025 meeting with Oklahoma at the Cotton Bowl, so only three SEC opponents made the trip to Austin that fall. Nine league games give the Longhorns four conference home dates every year, regardless of which school is listed as home in Dallas.

The SEC approved the nine-game format in August 2025. The playoff, meanwhile, stayed at 12 teams for 2026 after the Big Ten and SEC failed to agree on an expanded field, which means five conference champions and seven at-large bids again this December. A deal to double the bracket to 24 teams starting in 2027 is now close, pending final approvals. If it goes through, the SEC’s first season with nine league games will also be its only one judged by a 12-team field, the exact sequence Sarkisian said the coaches wanted to avoid.

Where does Texas stand with five SEC games left?

“Since we’ve been in the 12-team playoff, the committee has never put a nine-win team in and we’ve had multiple ones in the Southeastern Conference. Now we’ve added eight losses for teams in this conference and we’re all trying to get into the playoffs so it is going to be difficult,” Sarkisian told Dave Campbell’s Texas Football in April.

Texas was among those nine-win SEC teams a year ago. The Longhorns finished the 2025 regular season 9-3, opened that year with a 14-7 loss at the Ohio State Buckeyes, and were left out of the field.

This team already owns a 24-23 win over Ohio State from Sept. 12 to go with the Ole Miss result. It also has two losses. Mississippi State (Saturday, 7:30 p.m. ET on ESPN) and the Arkansas Razorbacks still visit Austin, and road trips to the Missouri Tigers, LSU Tigers and Texas A&M Aggies remain. One more loss in that stretch puts the Longhorns at 9-3, the exact record Sarkisian raised on Thursday.

“What is it really going to look like when there’s 9-3 SEC teams compared to 10-2 or even 11-1 teams from other conferences?” Sarkisian asked.

For all the concern about how the committee will weigh the league, Sarkisian allowed that the only part Texas controls starts Saturday night.

“At the end of the day, you got to handle your business and you got to do your job to put your team in the best position to be successful,” Sarkisian said.