The Southeastern Conference knows no peace and spares no program — something that is both a curse and a blessing for Texas football.
This week’s evidence is as follows: unranked Auburn beat No. 1 Georgia, No. 14 Tennessee defeated No. 6 Alabama and unranked Florida traveled home to The Swamp after a comeback win over the No. 7 Texas Longhorns.
What does any of this mean for the conference at large?
No one really knows.
Contextualizing the chaos that is SEC football is nearly impossible, as almost every team seems to have at least one impressive win and one perplexing loss so far.
What is clear, though, is that Texas needs this conference turmoil if it wants any shot at making the College Football Playoff. The more SEC teams beat each other up and ruin each other’s records, the more difficult it will be for the CFP selection committee to make its choices.
The same logic can be applied to the SEC Championship game, as head coach Steve Sarkisian emphasized in a Monday media availability.
“We’re right in the middle of an SEC race,” Sarkisian said. “I won’t be surprised if the SEC Championship game has two teams that (had) multiple losses playing each other.”
Last year’s SEC Championship game featured a matchup between a one-loss Georgia team and a two-loss Alabama team. In 2024, it was the 11–1 Longhorns facing the 10–2 Bulldogs.
For context, the four teams who competed in the 2024 and 2025 Big 10 Championship games had a combined total of one loss during the regular season. The Big 10 has less top-to-bottom depth than the SEC, which means the margin for error is smaller.
The CFP selection committee seems to understand that the conference is tough to succeed in, as it selected five SEC teams and just three Big 10 teams to make the postseason.
But the committee isn’t going to support the selection of a team that can’t properly weaponize its talent to win tough games. In other words, the top-to-bottom conference turmoil within the SEC right now means nothing if Texas can’t turn its season around immediately.
Accumulating two losses across the first three conference matchups isn’t where the Longhorns wanted to be this season, and it puts them in an extremely dangerous position moving forward.
With everything to lose, Texas must enter its matchup against Ole Miss with an unparalleled sense of urgency. Sarkisian is aware of this reality.
“I think we (have) an opportunity this week to show the true character of this team,” Sarkisian said. “We get to be back at home at DKR. Our fans were awesome last Saturday, and I expect nothing less of our fans again this Saturday night.”
The Longhorns could slide into the CFP with two losses — maybe even with three, depending on how the rest of the SEC looks throughout the remainder of the season — but anything more than that would ensure their elimination from contention.
