Steve Sarkisian Exposes Different Problem Facing College Football Beyond NIL

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian has spent five years biting his tongue while college football lurched from one crisis to the next. He runs the sport's wealthiest program, sits near the top of most way-too-early 2026 rankings and has guided the Longhorns to two College Football Playoff semifinals in three seasons.

Now he is finally swinging. And his sharpest jab has nothing to do with name, image and likeness.

In a sweeping interview with USA Today's Matt Hayes, Sarkisian aimed his frustration directly at the CFP selection committee, questioning whether the 13 members can realistically evaluate the field they are tasked with picking.

Sarkisian targets selection committee transparency

The CFP debate has fixated on field size, with the sport split between sticking at 16 teams or jumping to 24. Sarkisian thinks both arguments miss the more pressing flaw.

"Everyone talks about NIL. But my biggest gripe is the selection committee," Sarkisian said. "There's no transparency on what exactly the committee is doing. We have to figure that out."

His math is the part that should rattle administrators. A 12-team bracket already pulls roughly 30 programs into the conversation each week. Push the field to 24 and that pool balloons north of 40.

"The committee doesn't have the bandwidth to watch that many games," Sarkisian said. "They see the media and coaches polls, and they copy them."

The structural problem reinforces his point. Six of the 13 committee members are sitting FBS athletic directors, including chairman Hunter Yurachek of Arkansas. CFP executive director Rich Clark insists every member has iPad access to every game, but Sarkisian counters that even a self-described football junkie cannot keep up.

He stopped voting in the US LBM Coaches Poll for that exact reason.

Why his 4-team playoff pitch matters

Sarkisian floated a contrarian fix that will land like a bomb in television boardrooms. He wants the bracket cut in half, with conferences staging their own postseasons to feed inventory to broadcast partners.

"I'd go back to a four-team playoff, and have your own conference playoff to get the four teams if you want more inventory for your television partners," Sarkisian told USA Today. "We have to think outside the box. Just adding teams and going to 24, that's a very spastic view, thinking that's going to solve the problem."

The pivot is notable. On Da Get Got Pod with Marshawn Lynch earlier this offseason, Sarkisian argued the field needed to grow, pointing out that 14 of 32 NFL teams qualify for the postseason while just 12 of 65 Power Four programs make the CFP.

That his thinking has flipped this dramatically in a matter of weeks underscores how unsettled the format conversation remains across coaching circles.

A 24-team playoff is likely inevitable

The momentum is already pointing one direction whether Sarkisian likes it or not. The AFCA Board of Trustees, a group that includes Brent Venables, Bret Bielema and Pat Fitzgerald, just threw its support behind a 24-team field and the elimination of conference championship games. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua have all swung toward 24 over the past several weeks.

CFP media consultants are circulating financial valuations for a 24-team bracket that pegs new revenue at between 300 million and 700 million dollars across 10 additional games. When that kind of money lands on the table, the moral arguments about regular-season value tend to get filed away in the same drawer as the BCS computer rankings.

Greg Sankey and the SEC remain the lone meaningful holdout, still publicly attached to 16, but anyone who has watched this sport bend toward television checks knows where this ends. The Big Ten wants 24. The ACC and Big 12 see automatic qualifiers as their survival mechanism. ESPN has already extended deadlines twice and rewritten contracts to keep the inventory flowing.

Sankey will eventually trade his 16-team preference for a model that hands the SEC four guaranteed bids and a fatter check, and the league office will sell it as a win for access. Sarkisian's four-team pitch is the right diagnosis at the wrong moment in history. The 24-team playoff is coming, probably for 2027, because every power broker in the room makes more money when it does.

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