The first edition of this year’s College Football Playoff rankings will be released on Tuesday, when the CFP committee will rank its top 25 teams in the country each week until Dec. 7, at which point 12 teams will officially be selected into the playoffs.

One change to the 12-team CFP this year that could take place is an increase of SEC teams in the tournament. Last year, a point of contention in the selection was that only three SEC squads were chosen to compete in the CFP. This year, however, there are nine SEC teams currently ranked in the AP Top 25 poll, which seemingly would pave the way for more teams from the conference to make it into the postseason.

Ahead of the first rankings from the committee, Texas Longhorns coach Steve Sarkisian said, “How the committee handles it, I don’t know, but I know we got Georgia here in two weeks, on the road, it’s going to be a tough game. That’s where our focus is right now. What does the committee does with the teams in our conference, we’ll see. I know our conference is really deep, is really good, probably deserving more than three teams, I know that much. I know the SEC only got three teams last year, which is laughable, quite frankly, but we’ll see what happens this year.”

The Longhorns were one of the three SEC teams to make the CFP last year, but with two losses and at No. 13 in the AP Top 25 poll, they could be on the outside looking in this year along with a number of other teams in the conference.

Through this point of the year, Texas A&M is the only remaining undefeated team in the SEC. Texas has upcoming matchups against the Aggies and Georgia, and likely will need to win at least one of those games for a strong shot at returning to the CFP.

Currently, Texas ranks behind Texas A&M, Alabama, Georgia, Ole Miss and Oklahoma in the conference. All five of those teams have more favorable schedules ahead than the Longhorns, but on the brighter side for Texas, strength of schedule will be considered more for the selection this time around.

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Texas’s Steve Sarkisian Had Strong Message About SEC Ahead of First CFP Rankings.

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