Joel Klatt on Texas vs. Ohio State: 'The Playoff is not going to care who wins that game'

One of the biggest games of the year will occur in Week 1, when Texas takes on Ohio State in a clash of titans. Just how important will the game be?

That’s a question that FOX Sports’ Colin Cowherd attempted to tackle on his show The Herd with Colin Cowherd. Cowherd had on fellow FOX Sports’ analyst Joel Klatt and put him to the question of whether Steve Sarkisian and Texas are under added pressure going into the matchup.

“Yes, I think I understand your premise on that, plus they’ve just gone to two straight semifinals,” Klatt said. “And now you’ve got this quarterback, this was what everyone was anticipating when Arch Manning signed.”

That said, Klatt wasn’t fully on board with the line of thinking that Texas is under some additional pressure. If anything, the circumstances around the program have lightened the load on Sarkisian and company.

“Now, one of the things that Sark has going for him, and it’s almost like Michigan last year, it’s almost like, ‘Listen, we understand what came prior,'” Klatt said. “Michigan understood what happened the 10 years prior before the last four years, when they were able to beat Ohio State and win a national championship a couple of years ago. So their fanbase is not quite as on the edge of their seat as maybe they would have been prior.”

Texas had been in the college football doldrums for a while until Sarkisian came around. Since then, the program has re-emerged on the national stage.

So, pressure? Klatt thinks not so much.

“Why does that apply to Texas? Well, Texas fans remember what the desert was like,” Klatt said. “I mean, Colin, it was 15 years, 10 years, 15 years where it was like, ‘Is Texas back? Is Texas back?’ They’re churning through coaches. And now all the sudden they find themselves where they are a preeminent program, not only in the sport but in the SEC.”

There’s a certain level of trust in program leadership now that wasn’t there before. That says a lot about Sarkisian and what he’s been able to do at Texas.

“They know that Sark can do it,” Klatt said. “He’s recruiting at a high level year in and year out. And I think there’s this idea with Texas, like, ‘Yes, we want to win. Yes, we want to go to the national championship. Yes, we want to beat Ohio State. But we understand that we have it better than we did.’

“So there’s some level of relaxed expectation because of that. Plus you throw on top of all of that discussion that the playoff is not going to care who wins that game. That’ll be determined through the regular season and conference play and getting into the playoff. We’ll look at that game more for seeding purposes than we will access purposes.”