The Longhorns' fall from grace was, perhaps, as sudden as their ascent at the season's start, when they were marked as the country's top team. But now, the University of Texas finds itself on the outside looking in, after the College Football Playoff (CFP) bracket was set without them. Despite head coach Steve Sarkisian's efforts to marshal support, it wasn't enough to convince the committee, which snubbed the Longhorns for the postseason glory they once seemed destined to achieve.
"There's obviously a level of disappointment of not making the CFP," Sarkisian said, according to KXAN. Despite rallying with wins over fellow playoff contenders Oklahoma and Texas A&M, losses to Ohio State and a particularly damaging defeat to an underperforming Florida squad cemented their fate. The Longhorns, a team that had started the season with a No. 1 ranking, wound up finishing No. 13 in the final CFP rankings with a less-than-impressive 9-3 record.
With an eye towards salvaging some pride, the Longhorns will head to Orlando to face the No. 18 Michigan Wolverines in the not-quite-as-high-stakes, yet respectable, Cheez-It Citrus Bowl on December 31. "This is an opportunity to play another game against a really good team, and we're going to cherish it," Sarkisian told KXAN, with the intention of using the bowl game as a chance to end the season on a positive note.
Meanwhile, fellow Texas teams, the Texas A&M Aggies and the Texas Tech Red Raiders, are in the mix for the national title. They defied preseason expectations, particularly the Aggies, who climbed the ranks after a notable early victory over Notre Dame. Texas Tech also turned heads with its spending spree on talent, an investment that appeared to pay dividends as it snatched the Big 12 title and a coveted first-round bye in the playoffs. In contrast, reports from KUT highlighted that Arch Manning, the quarterback once predicted to win the Heisman, could not prevent the Longhorns' tumble from their initial top spot, which eventually saw them momentarily unranked after key losses.
Not all narratives ended as anticlimactically as Texas’s story, however. Tulane and James Madison, by securing their status as champions of the American Athletic Conference and Sun Belt Conference, respectively, leveraged new qualifying rules to earn their spots in the 12-team bracket. While Indiana claimed the No. 1 seed in a testament to the unpredictability of college football. For schools like Iowa State and Kansas State, their bowl season woes were compounded by recent coaching changes and subsequent decline of bowl invitations, resulting in penalties that, according to KXAN, include a $500,000 fine from the Big 12 Conference.
The playoffs are marching forward with or without the Longhorns, and as heartbreak lingers over Austin, another kind of anticipation builds for teams like Indiana, Ohio State, and Georgia, who continue their pursuit of college football’s most coveted trophy. As for Texas, they'll look to the Citrus Bowl to provide a silver lining to a season of unrealized promise and what-ifs.
