Get mad at the CFP committee for non-conference cancellations, not Texas fans
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The decision sparked a rant on the daily football podcast “Andy & Ari On3” that lacked nuance in attacking Texas fans who support the cancellation with a line of argument that doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny at all.
“I also think that in the context of this conversation, that the only thing that is focused on, which is, by the way, Andy, the softest of soft of this part, what happens if we lose? Why is all of the Texas fan base that believes this not considering what it does for you when you win,” Ari Wasserman asked.
The hosts moved on to discussing the iconic 34-34 win by Texas over Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 2023 that helped vault the Longhorns to their first College Football Playoff appearance while marking the unofficial end of Nick Saban’s dynasty.
“We shouldn’t have played that, like, what, our best memories? Yeah, well, let’s not play that,” Wasserman said.
The problem is that no one is arguing that Texas shouldn’t have played that game. Longhorns athletics director Chris Del Conte and head coach Steve Sarkisian have both publicly made it clear how much they want to schedule marquee non-conference matchups, continuing the school’s longstanding policy that resulted from the degradation of the school’s home games after multiple departures from the Big 12 15 years ago.
Since then, in addition to the Alabama series, Texas has played home-and-home series against Notre Dame, USC, hosted LSU before the cancellation of the game in Baton Rouge in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, and is set to host Ohio State and Michigan in the next two seasons to complete those series.
Notice how the Longhorns haven’t cancelled those two games? How fans aren’t calling for those cancellations?
It’s because the burnt orange and white faithful have long loved those games — the top-flight programs coming to Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, the road trips to some of the sport’s most iconic venues. And those series weren’t just a service to Texas fans, they were a service to college football itself.
There’s also no more need to schedule non-conference games against programs like Alabama and LSU because Texas and Oklahoma both made the bold move to embrace the greatest challenge in college football, playing an SEC conference schedule, which is now made all the more difficult moving forward with the nine-game slate starting this season.
Notably, Del Conte supported that decision in the best interest of his fans and the sport, but the pressure of that game has drastically changed the non-conference scheduling calculus for Texas from where it was 15 years ago. As much as Del Conte would like the calculus to remain the same, it’s not, prompting an argument to further expand the College Football Playoff to avoid the cancellations that are happening across the SEC, not just at Texas.
“If the playoff is going to expand, which I prefer the playoff expands, you want to then have great games,” Del Conte said earlier this month. “And value those great games as long as we have an opportunity to get into the postseason… I prefer to preserve the regular season by playing great games and not dumbing down your schedule.”
Another glaring issue in the argument made by Wasserman and Staples is honing in on the fans to criticize decisions made as a result of the College Football Playoff committee not following its own guidelines, which place strength of schedule and head-to-head competition at the top of the list.
How that did work out for Texas in 2025?
The Longhorns were the first team since the 2019 title-winning Tigers squad to notch three regular-season victories over top-10 opponents, producing the No. 5 strength of schedule nationally with games against the No. 1, No. 3, and No. 4 teams in the country.
But they still missed the playoff, sparking the prescient warning from Sarkisian after Texas beat then-No. 3 Texas A&M to end the regular season.
“I think more importantly, what message do we want to send to the head coaches and the athletic directors around the country? You want us not to schedule Ohio State? Because if we’re a 10-2 team right now, this isn’t a discussion. We’re in the playoff, but we were willing to go up there and play that game,” Sarkisian said.
”When you play five top-10 ranked teams in the regular season, and you go 3-2, you beat three of them, and you schedule an Ohio State in out-of-conference play, I surely don’t think we want to punish us to do that, because what are we all going to do?“
The Longhorns were punished, and it was a rhetorical question from the Texas head coach because everybody knew what was going to result from that type of punishment from the committee. Now the consequences have arrived.
So the problem isn’t that Longhorns fans are “brainwashed,” the problem is that Wasserman and Staples are directing their ire in a braindead direction.
Get mad at the playoff committee for not actually valuing strength of schedule, not fans who want to see their team play for a championship.
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