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Steve Sarkisian has been on the wrong side of a signature road loss before, and he doesn’t want Ohio State to pay the same price he did a year ago.
After Texas pulled off a stunning comeback against Ohio State on Saturday night, Sarkisian spent part of his Monday press conference sticking up for the team he’d just beaten. His argument: if the Buckeyes end up with multiple losses this season, the College Football Playoff committee needs to look past the raw record.
“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 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.”
He didn’t stop there.
Sarkisian took it a step further, arguing that Ohio State’s willingness to travel to Austin and play in that kind of heat should actually count in the Buckeyes’ favor.
“Quite frankly, Ohio State should be rewarded for playing in this type of game against us,” Sarkisian said.
For more on how Arch Manning authored that comeback, CBS Sports has the full breakdown of his night against the Buckeyes.
Sarkisian’s reasoning isn’t just about being a good sport after a win, either. He thinks there’s a real cost to the game if the committee gets this wrong.
If the committee only counts losses without digging into who they came against, Sarkisian says, programs will simply stop scheduling marquee non-conference games. Why risk a loss on national TV when you can load up on FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) and Group of Six opponents instead?
“If they don’t reward them for playing in the game, then all of us start playing FCS and [Group of] Six,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t think that’s the product we want in college football. … If we want to continue those matchups, we gotta reward the teams for playing in those games.”
Ohio State loss cost Texas a playoff spot last year
He’s lived this before.
Last season, Texas finished 9-3 and still missed the playoff. One of those three losses came in Columbus, a seven-point defeat at Ohio State’s hands in Week 1.
“This isn’t crying over spilled milk,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t think we got rewarded for going to Columbus last year in Week 1. Hopefully, this year, they reward Ohio State for coming to play this game against us.”
Texas ran through a brutal slate in 2025. The Longhorns played five games against top-10 opponents and won three of them. Both losses came on the road, one at Ohio State, the other at Georgia.
Despite that resume, the committee still left Texas at No. 13 in the final rankings. Sarkisian argued at the time that a 10-2 Texas team belonged in the playoff “no questions asked.”
That snub stuck with him. It even led Sarkisian to question whether the Longhorns’ upcoming home-and-home series with Notre Dame was worth keeping on the the schedule going forward.
“Anything after that is up for discussion,” Sarkisian said, per 247Sports.
Ohio State can avoid Texas’ fate simply by not losing twice more. The Buckeyes still have to get through Indiana, USC, Oregon and Michigan, but games like those aren’t what actually sank the Longhorns last year.
The real damage on Texas’ resume came from a road loss to Florida, a team that finished 4-8 and fired Billy Napier midway through the season. That same Florida team also lost to South Florida and got blown out by both Kentucky and Tennessee.
If a big group of 10-2 teams ends up in the mix this year and Ohio State is one of them, a loss to Texas in Austin shouldn’t be the reason the Buckeyes get left out. But drop a third game somewhere else on the schedule, and Ohio State could find itself staring at the same outcome Texas did last December.
