Texas news: Steve Sarkisian dishes on ‘playoff-or-bust’ money problem

The expansion of the College Football Playoff has unquestionably caused a change in how the top teams are viewed in college football.

When the CFP was just a four-team field, a top team could lose just one or two games and just miss out on the field, and it would still be considered a successful season. Now, however, any result that involves missing the CFP is seen as a failure for the best programs in the sport.

On Tuesday at SEC Spring Meetings, Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian spoke about the playoff-or-bust mentality in college football now, and the money influx that has allowed the sport to be perceived that way, via On3 Sports.

“It’s challenging, because when I talked about Playoff-or-bust, there’s a lot of money invested now. There’s a lot of money invested from donors, there’s a lot of money invested from fans, there’s a lot of TV money involved – you’re talking billions of dollars,” Sarkisian said. “And all of a sudden we’re all reliant upon 16 people sitting in a room deciding who’s making the Playoffs and who’s not. The ramifications of that are enormous, and I do think that is something we have to take into consideration, the allocation of money and funds, what we’re doing with our money. We need to be prudent with that.”

That line of thought resulted in multiple head coaches being fired during the 2025 season. Penn State fired James Franklin once it became apparent that the Nittany Lions were not going to make it to the CFP, and LSU moved on from Brian Kelly for the same reason.

Next season, if there is a top team that is underachieving, there is a good chance we could see another stunning firing during the season.

Texas is one of the teams that is under a lot of pressure coming into next season, as the Longhorns might even earn the No. 1 spot in the preseason rankings with Arch Manning at quarterback. That preseason expectation will put even more pressure on Sarkisian and company coming into 2026.