Steve Sarkisian responds to thought that College Football Playoff bye hurt teams

The College Football Playoff is in its first season being expanded to 12 teams. With that, there have been several different aspects of the new format that came into question. In particular, that includes how seeding is handled and if the system of bye weeks is helpful.

Now, after winning two games in the College Football Playoff, Texas Longhorns head coach Steve Sarkisian shared some of his thoughts on the system, including whether or not getting the bye week is actually beneficial.

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“I don’t know [if there will be change],” Steve Sarkisian said. “I’ve referenced this before. My initial thought on all of this was similar to the NCAA Basketball Tournament. If you win your conference championship, you get an automatic bid into the tournament, like like they’re doing basketball, and then the committee seeds the tournament.”

That, of course, wasn’t exactly how the College Football Playoff works. In the Playoff, the top five conference champions by ranking get auto bids and the top four of those teams get a bye week, adding value to conference championship games where both teams appear to be securely in the field. However, it led to teams seemingly less deserving of getting bye weeks as well.

“You know, and I’ve referenced these two schools just because they’re in the same conference, But how many times have Duke and North Carolina both been number one seeds coming out of the ACC for all those years? And so like in this instance, if this year were that way, we would have been the three seed and we would have gotten a bye, but because of the guaranteed spots as one seeds, we went in as the five seed and we had to play.”

The four teams that did receive bye weeks were Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, and Arizona State. Notably, they all lost their first game. Three teams, Texas, Penn State, and SMU, played in their conference championship games and didn’t get a bye week. The Longhorns and Nittany Lions are still alive and have played a significant amount of football.

“And so I don’t know if there’s necessarily an advantage or a disadvantage to it that way. I know our guys were chomping at the bit to get back out there and play and compete. But I also know we’re going into our 16th game here coming up this coming week without a real significant rest. We’ve been finding our spots to get some rest and to get healthy, but we didn’t get that massive rest that I think a lot of the other teams do,” Sarkisian said.

“Now, I don’t know if that’s beneficial or not. I think there’s something to be said for playing football consistently in rhythm and routine and so on and so forth. So, I’m not sure I have an answer for what is best but that would have been my one recommendation to the seeding process.”

Texas will be back in action on Friday, January 10th at 7:30 p.m. in the Cotton Bowl against Ohio State. Winning that game will earn the Longhorns one more game for a national championship.