Texas HC Steve Sarkisian: How Expanding CFP Field Would Impact Regular Season

Rich saved the biggest question for last, and it was not really about Texas. It was about what happens to the college football regular season if the playoff keeps growing.

What is the right number of teams? Steve Sarkisian's answer started with the reassuring part.

"Right now at 12, I don't think that that's a reality," Sarkisian said, meaning the prospect of coaches resting starters down the stretch. "Because you still want to play for a conference championship. And you're still trying to get that first round bye."

That is the load-bearing detail. A 12-team field still leaves something to chase in November, which is exactly what keeps starters on the field.

Then Sarkisian walked through the version of this that already exists one level up. The NFL has 32 teams and 14 playoff spots, and everybody knows what weeks 17 and 18 look like once a division is clinched.

"Teams that clinched their division do rest players, because they do know that they have that bye or they can't move their slot in the playoffs," he said. "So let's rest a Josh Allen or a Pat Mahomes or whomever, Ja'Marr Chase, all the great ones."

College football is not there. Sarkisian was careful to say it is not there yet.

"If that time comes when we get to 16 or 24, whatever that looks like, I do think that may become a reality," he said. The reason is not cynicism, it is obligation. Programs answer to their universities, and universities want championships. Given a structure that rewards saving your best players for January, coaches will save their best players for January.

The question Sarkisian kept circling was whether anyone actually wants that outcome. What does it look like when a fan buys a ticket to a home game against a rival and the rival sits its starters? What does it look like when there are no conference championship games at all?

His answer was to give credit to the person who slowed the whole thing down. Sarkisian pointed to Greg Sankey pumping the brakes on expansion inside the SEC, specifically to force a look at the unintended consequences before anyone signs anything.

"I appreciate not just being quick to jump, to change, and having a little bit of caution, having a little bit of pause," Sarkisian said, listing what still needs examining: the media rights of the playoffs, the conference championship games, the potential resting of really good players in home games and rivalry games.

"We're not the NFL, at least not yet," he said. "Our structure is different than theirs."

He was equally clear that pausing is not the same as pretending. Sarkisian said that to believe further expansion is not a potential reality down the road would mean having your head in the sand. The sport has absorbed an enormous amount of change in a short window, and some of it was inevitable.

Which is why he wants the 10,000-foot view before the next move rather than after it.

"It's okay to slow down, it's okay to pump our brakes a little bit and step back," Sarkisian said. "Where do we really want it to go? What do we want it to look like?"

Nobody at 12 teams is resting anybody yet. That is the whole point of asking now.