Texas coach warns 24-team College Football Playoff expansion lacks transparency and bandwidth

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has publicly criticised the proposal to expand the College Football Playoff to 24 teams, describing the move as a knee-jerk reaction that would overwhelm the selection committee. Speaking in an interview with USA Today, the Texas Longhorns head coach argued that the current 12-team format already places a heavy burden on the panel, which consists of athletic directors, former coaches, and former players.

Sarkisian stated that the committee currently lacks the bandwidth to monitor the necessary volume of games if the field were to expand significantly. He noted that while the current format requires the panel to watch at least 30 teams that impact the selection, expanding to 24 teams would force them to evaluate 40 or even 50 teams per week. Under such a scenario, he argued, the committee would become even more reliant on media and coaches' polls rather than direct observation.

The criticism comes as the American Football Coaches Association recently voted to recommend maximum expansion to 24 teams, alongside the elimination of conference championship games. While the Big Ten has supported a 24-team model with multiple automatic qualifiers, Sarkisian contends that the current process is not functioning well enough to justify such a drastic increase in the field size. He suggested that the lack of clarity in how the committee evaluates teams makes expansion a flawed solution to ongoing playoff controversy.

A central point of Sarkisian's argument is the lack of transparency regarding the committee's specific evaluation criteria. Although the panel considers wins and losses, strength of schedule, conference championships, and head-to-head results, Sarkisian highlighted that the weighting of these factors remains unclear. He questioned how the committee accounts for differing regular-season schedules when comparing teams, pointing to scheduling inequity as a core issue that expansion would fail to resolve.

This concern is underscored by last season's selection, where Texas was excluded from the 12-team field despite a 9-3 record and wins over ranked opponents. Conversely, Miami secured a spot with a less consistent regular-season résumé but validated its selection through strong postseason results. Sarkisian noted that the SEC has moved to a nine-game conference schedule, which increases the number of high-level matchups and potentially raises strength-of-schedule variability, further complicating the comparison between programs.

Rather than expanding the field, Sarkisian proposed an alternative model that returns to a four-team playoff. He suggested that conference championships should determine the qualifiers, providing the necessary inventory for television partners without overloading the selection process. For now, the College Football Playoff remains at 12 teams through the 2026 campaign, but Sarkisian's warnings suggest that any expansion without addressing the current structural flaws risks deepening the debate over fairness.