Texas Longhorns Still Projected As College Football Playoff Team

According to CBS Sports, the Texas Longhorns are still in great position to make the College Football Playoff.

Matt Galatzan | Oct 11, 2023

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Texas Longhorns

The Texas Longhorns might have suffered a significant disappointment in their loss to the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday.

However, their season is still far from lost.

In fact, according to CBS Sports, the Horns are still projected as a College Football Playoff contender - should they take care of business the rest of the way of course.

So what is the road for the Horns to make the playoffs?

First, they must win out, beating the remaining six teams on their regular season schedule. From there, they must take down the Oklahoma Sooners in the Big 12 Championship Game in Arlington.

However, that's not all.

The Horns would also have to hope for No. 2 Michigan to take care of Business against No. 3 Ohio State, giving Texas the edge over the presumably one-loss Buckeyes as a conference champion.

Jordan Whittington vs. the Oklahoma Sooners / © Jerome Miron, USA TODAY

This criterion also likely holds true for Penn State if the Nittany Lions take down Ohio State on Oct. 21 as well.

"Texas gets the spot over Ohio State in this scenario due to being a conference champion (a minor criterion) and having a win over Alabama on the road in nonconference play," said CBS Sports. "Ohio State also has a quality nonconference road win at Notre Dame, but it would be a 12th victory and a conference title short of matching Texas' resume. Oklahoma does not have a quality nonconference game on its schedule."

In this scenario, CBS has the Horns heading to the Sugar Bowl as the No. 4 seed to take on the No. 1 seed and SEC Champion Georgia Bulldogs, which No. 2 Michigan takes on No. 3 Florida State in the Rose Bowl.

But what about the Pac-12? As most project, and as seems to be the case here, the Pac-12 seems to be poised to cannibalize itself, with Washington and USC making it out of the gauntlet into New Year's Six bowls.

Whatever the case, one thing is clear - with their quality win over Alabama, and another potentially on the horizon with Oklahoma in a conference title game - the Longhorns still have everything in front of them.

All they have to do is take care of business.

Published Oct 11, 2023

MATT GALATZAN

Matt Galatzan is the Managing Editor and Publisher of Texas Longhorns On SI and Texas A&M Aggies On SI and a long-time member of the Football Writer’s Association of America. He graduated from the University of Mississippi, where he studied integrated marketing communications, with minors in journalism and business administration. Galatzan started in the sports journalism industry in 2014 covering the Dallas Mavericks and SMU Mustangs with 247Sports. He then moved to Sports Illustrated's Fan Nation network in 2020, eventually being taking over as the Managing Editor and Publisher of the Longhorns and Aggies sites a year later. You can find Galatzan on all major social media channels, including Twitter on @MattGalatzan.