Danny Kanell pushes back against Steve Sarkisian's plea for Texas to make College Football Playoff

College football analyst Danny Kanell is already displeased with Steve Sarkisian and the coach’s plea to get Texas into the College Football Playoff. Sarkisian made some valid points about Texas’ strength of schedule, quality wins and losses and they ended the regular season on a high note, beating undefeated and No. 3 Texas A&M.

But Kanell didn’t want to hear the arguments, or what he called propaganda, from Sarkisian and the Longhorns. At 9-3, Texas is currently undeserving of the CFP and it would not be a disservice if they missed out on the tournament, per Kanell.

“Oh, boy, get ready. The PR assault is coming. It’s already started, too, and it started all the way back in Spring Meetings, the SEC Spring Meetings, when Greg Sankey had a whole booklet of propaganda talking about the strength of schedule and how hard it is to play in the SEC,” Kanell said during his sunny drive Saturday morning.

“Well, then those coaches have taken it and run with it, including Steve Sarkisian last night after the big win against Texas A&M, making his case for his team into the College Football Playoff, and he said it would be a disservice to college football if Texas was not in the playoff. And he referenced a few of their wins. Interestingly, he did not mention any of their losses. Well, actually, he did mention one Ohio State, because that is a good loss, but he glossed over a 25 point loss at Georgia and an ugly loss to a 3-8 Florida team.”

Kanell made his point about Texas’ losses to Florida and Georgia, not just Ohio State. He wanted to point out to Sarkisian that you can’t cherry pick portions of your schedule to make a case for the College Football Playoff.

“Here’s the disservice to college football, if you ignore what happened in the regular season, the thing that makes college football great, it is a 12 game schedule where every game matters,” Kanell said. “It can’t just be three, it can’t just be four games matter. It has to be the totality of it, or else you destroy the regular season.”

Kanell didn’t want to rule out Sarkisian and Texas making the CFP for the third straight year though. He just didn’t want to automatically put them in because of Friday night’s win.

“Texas can still make the playoffs, albeit a very slim hope,” Kanell said. “They need Oklahoma to lose if they’re comparative right next to each other, I give Texas the edge if there’s other teams that are nine and three, possibly a couple 10-2 teams, but you cannot come out here and pound the table and ignore the losses that happened in the regular season.

“It feels just like last year, where there were tough losses in the regular season that kept some quality teams out. But that’s what makes our sport the best, because the regular season matters. Don’t screw this up, committee.”