Is Texas in the 12-team playoff if it goes 10-2? The CFP Selection Committee wouldn't say.

Texas fans don’t want to consider the hypothetical, and neither does the College Football Playoff selection committee.

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CFP selection committee chairman Warde Manuel was on his regular post-rankings release conference call Tuesday night, and fielded the following question about if No. 3 Texas would be in the 12-team field if the Longhorns lost to Texas A&M and failed to reach the SEC Championship.

Q. In regards to Texas, there seems to be this belief that if they finish 10-2, lose to Texas A&M and don’t go to the SEC Championship game that there is no road to get to the playoff. Can you offer some insight on the Texas resume, and if they don’t go to the SEC title game, is there still a road to the playoff?

WARDE MANUEL: “Thanks for your question. We don’t, I don’t, get into projections. We don’t talk about projections when we get in the room, about the what-ifs, if people lose games then where will it put them. Obviously you can see from the number of losses we had this week, it just depends on what happens. There was a lot to sort out this week with seven of the top 25 losing, two big upsets in the top 10.

So we don’t project what will happen. We just look at what happens overall amongst the teams this weekend to make our decision over the next two weekends really.”

Texas has been a focus for media in recent weeks, specifically because of the Longhorns’ lack of wins perceived as being strong. Questions about Texas’ SEC schedule have persisted, too, an ironic twist considering how often the Longhorns were told they wouldn’t be ready for the rigors of SEC play.

Though the hypothetical wasn’t one Manuel touched, the data points toward the answer likely being yes. Texas would have a resume that features only losses to the two teams in the SEC Championship Game. The Longhorns would also finish third in the SEC, and it’s tough to believe the third place team in the SEC would be left in the cold even amidst all the different arguments about how many teams a certain conference should have in the 12-team field.

The other contending SEC teams, Alabama and Ole Miss, suffered third losses this past weekend that preclude them from reaching the SEC Championship. Though those SEC teams have quality wins, the No. 3 in those loss columns might be too much of a hurdle for the committee to clear to put them into the 12-team field ahead of Big 10 or ACC teams with fewer defeats.

In addition, Georgia, the only team that has defeated Texas this season, continued to be a sticking point for members of the media.

Warde, it seems like you guys have been willing to kind of shift teams and rank teams by more than the loss column. Looking at Georgia, this week they’ve got three wins over top-12 teams now, and then obviously the two losses to Alabama and Ole Miss, versus a Miami that’s in front of them with I believe no ranked wins this week and Penn State up there with a 14-point home win over No. 23. How do you guys weigh the wins versus maybe lack of opportunity for good wins or even a team like Texas who has played one ranked team and lost by 15 at home? Where does that all come into this conversation, especially as you guys have shown that you are willing to shake up between one-loss and two-loss teams?

WARDE MANUEL: “You know, it’s a great question, and it’s one that we debate. One of the things that we talk about is teams can only play the schedule they have in front of them against the teams that have been, from a conference standpoint, assigned. We can maybe be critical of non-conference schedules and those kind of things, but when it gets to the conference, particularly as these conferences have expanded, there are more teams to play throughout the conference.

Teams can only play the schedule that’s in front of them. They can only play the opponents that they have.

So we take the stance that we’re going to really look at these games, we’re going to look at the stats, we’re going to look at the strength of schedule, but we’re also going to look at how teams are performing against the competition that they have.

From our perspective, if it was just about strength of schedule, we wouldn’t be needed. You could just take at the end of the season the top 12 teams with the highest strength of schedule and put them against each other.

What we’ve been asked to do is to judge and to look at how teams are playing against the competition that they have and to rank them accordingly to how we see it, and that’s the way I would explain how we take a look and we look at the differences even though the schedules and the opponents may be different.“

Finally, the Longhorns’ upcoming opponent, Texas A&M was a topic Manuel had to answer a question about.

Real quickly, how would you evaluate A&M if they beat Texas but lose to Georgia in the conference championship game? Would the committee consider a four-loss team that reached that championship game, or would that be too big a negative?

WARDE MANUEL: “You know, you’re asking me a hypothetical again. I don’t know how that would work out in terms of where teams would be and how it would be looked at in terms of Texas A&M and where they’ll be ranked after next weekend if they do beat Texas. How the game goes and the championship and all those kind of things are really both hypotheticals.

But we will assess, and if we determine at that time that teams need to move around and jump up depending on who lost in front of them, we’ve shown that we will make those adjustments as a committee and make that assessment and put them where we believe they should be.“

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Manuel won’t be dealing in hypotheticals after the Longhorns play the Aggies this weekend at Kyle Field. The game will be played at 6:30 p.m. and air on ABC.