Kirk Herbstreit keeps pushing schools to schedule big non-conference games despite CFP concerns

Kirk Herbstreit has long been a proponent of college football’s top programs scheduling the best matchups they can, not just for the good of the sport but because it shows that a team is worthy of a College Football Playoff spot.

The plight of the Texas Longhorns is reportedly scaring many Power 4 coaches and ADs into pulling back on that kind of strategy. The 9-3 Longhorns have solid wins over Texas A&M, Oklahoma, and Vandy, but their early-season loss to Ohio State, coupled with a bad loss to Florida, has seemingly doomed them to miss the CFP.

Herbstreit took to social media earlier in the week to push back against this trend, and he continued to clarify his stance on the latest episode of Nonstop with Kirk and Joey. During a discussion with cohost Joey Galloway, the ESPN college football analyst admitted that several prominent athletic directors and coaches have recently reached out to him about these concerns.

“When these (coaches and administrators) reach out to me and say, ‘I’m canceling this game. F that I’m not playing. Why should I play that?’ I mean, they are passionate about it, and I want to say, please keep playing these games, because your kids want to play in these games,” Herbstreit said. “The college football community celebrates these games. Your players would rather play Ohio State or Alabama or Texas A&M than play Rice, you know? Like, that’s not good for the sport.”

Man, Rice caught a tough stray there.

“Of course, losses should matter,” Herbstreit continued. “But take yourself into the world that Joey just described, nobody plays anybody in the non-conference because everyone’s afraid. If the committee doesn’t care who we play, then let’s just find three really, really small schools where we know we can win and get ready for conference play.

“Just think of that world of college football, that if administrators look at these rankings and they think, ‘Well, I’m being punished for playing high-profile games,’ and at the end of the year, people are just counting losses.”

Herbstreit has long been leading the charge to downgrade wins in favor of the schedule, and there is a certain logic to it, given how college football exists. But he also seems to assume that everyone else can’t make clear-headed decisions about what those wins and losses mean. No one is just “counting losses.” There’s a very clear-eyed view out there about why two-loss and three-loss teams might deserve shots their record doesn’t initially justify.

But at the same time, there are only so many spots, and sometimes it feels like people like Herbstreit put way too much effort into pushing for teams like Texas, who are relatively unlikely to win the national title even if they do get in. Herbstreit treats it as if the juice is worth the squeeze, even as most people recognize it’s not.

Also, as always, if Texas is so deserving and worthy of all this attention, they probably should have just beaten 4-8 Florida.