- Texas loss to Georgia delivers a punishing blow to Longhorns’ playoff hopes.
- Texas’ season results didn’t live up to the roster investment.
- Georgia sitting in great shape for College Football Playoff after big night from Gunner Stockton, Kirby Smart.
ATHENS, GA – The headline raised eyebrows and vaulted expectations.
Last spring, during one of the sleepiest portions of the sports calendar, veteran reporter Kirk Bohls of the Houston Chronicle uncorked a news bulletin that Texas’ roster was set to earn at least $35 million in NIL and revenue-share earnings. Aggregators feasted on that catnip. The story exploded.
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian tried to shove the genie back in the bottle. He called the report a rumor and pushed back on the highest end of the Houston Chronicle’s payroll projection, but nobody denied Texas invested big bucks in a team that earned a preseason No. 1 ranking.
Um, so, what’s the return policy on that purchase?
Texas’ war chest paid for the most average team money could buy.
Texas paid for a Porsche. It got a Kia. Not a terrible set of wheels. Not a Porsche, though.
It paid for the third-best team in the state of Texas, a mid-tier squad within the nation’s deepest conference.
With two games left before conference championship weekend, five SEC teams remain in prime shape for a College Football Playoff bid. No. 10 Texas isn’t one of them after a 35-10 loss to No. 5 Georgia at Sanford Stadium.
We can’t officially call this result playoff extinction for Texas – a Black Friday win against Texas A&M would give the committee something to ponder – but, at best, the Longhorns will be a three-loss team on Selection Sunday hoping to become the first three-loss qualifier in playoff history. No matter what this roster cost, I don’t buy that playoff pitch.
National championship aspirations are long good. The sobering reality is Texas is most likely headed for some also-ran bowl against an opponent that didn’t spend so much for its squad.
And although this loss will be remembered as the one that pushed the pin to the edge of Texas’ playoff bubble, let the historians remember Texas blew it weeks ago when it lost to previously sputtering Florida in The Swamp.
Call this season for what it is: A flop.
Arch Manning plays decent, Gunner Stockton plays better
You can’t write a postmortem on the Longhorns’ season without the prerequisite mention that Texas’ quarterback with perhaps the most famous surname in football didn’t live up to the unattainable expectations. You also can’t write the story of Arch Manning’s season without noting he improved the longer the season went.
This result cannot be laid at the Manning’s feet, and in fact he played as well as anyone in a white jersey on this night.
He didn’t play nearly as well as Georgia’s Gunner Stockton, who passed for four touchdowns and ran for another.
Eleven of Stockton’s first 12 passes found their mark against a Texas secondary that keeps providing insufficient coverage, about like a tank top in a thunderstorm.
Kirby Smart continues mastery of Steve Sarkisian
Georgia didn’t too need much ground support. Why handoff with Stockton completing nearly 83% of his passes? And why punt when Stockton could twice move the chains on fourth downs during a critical second-half scoring drive? Stockton completed a play-action pass for the first conversion, then drew the Longhorns offsides on fourth-and-5 to move the chains again, before capping the drive with another touchdown pass.
If those fourth-down conversions weren’t gutsy enough, Kirby Smart doubled down by hitting Texas with a sneak-attack onside kick right after that score. Cash Jones grabbed the ball for Georgia’s first onside kick recovery in a dozen years.
For the third time in the past 13 months, Smart stole Steve Sarkisian’s lunch money.
Georgia enjoys enviable position. If the SEC championships teams were assigned today, the Bulldogs wouldn’t be in the game. That’s perhaps a blessing. A conference championship weekend breather plus perhaps a No. 5 playoff seed and first-round home game would be ideal positioning for a Georgia team that’s closer to being a national championship contender than a vulnerable bubble team.
As Georgia pulled away in the fourth quarter, and chants of ‘U-G-A! U-G-A!’ rang out from the crowd, you could almost hear the massive sigh of collective relief from the playoff selection committee.
The playoff bubble’s getting awfully crowded, but the committee’s job gets just a bit easier each time a two-loss team turns into a three-loss team. With this result, Texas made it easy for the committee to say no thanks. Texas’ big investment failed to return a playoff bid.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.