Texas football coach Steve Sarkisian had no interest in backing off of his words shortly after the Longhorns were paired up with Ohio State for their College Football Playoff semifinal in the Cotton Bowl on Friday (6:30 p.m., ESPN).

Why, Sarkisian was asked on Thursday during a joint press conference with Buckeyes coach Ryan Day at AT&T Stadium, does he think Texas (13-2) is a massive underdog entering the program’s fourth all-time meeting with Ohio State (12-2)?

“I could probably poll everybody in this room and you’d probably all agree — [Ohio State is] the favorite to win the game,” Sarkisian said. “That’s OK. That’s football. That’s sport. That’s why we have to do what we do, so I’m not going to back off of what I said. The reality is the reality.”

According to the SportsLine consensus, the Longhorns are a 6-point underdog. Texas hasn’t been an underdog since the second game of the 2023 season when Sarkisian led the Longhorns into Bryant-Denny Stadium for a showdown with Alabama and returned to the Forty Acres as the last team to beat Nick Saban in Tuscaloosa.

Sarkisian said the way Day has rallied the troops since the Buckeyes ended the regular season with a stunning loss to Michigan at home makes Ohio State worthy of being labeled the best team left in the CFP. Sarkisian can’t stop his players from consuming information from outside the Moncrief Complex, including voices across the country who agree with him.

Nevertheless, he hasn’t made the team’s underdog status part of his plan to prepare his team for the program’s 23rd all-time appearance in the Cotton Bowl.

“We don’t talk that way,” Sarkisian said. “It’s a clean slate. The reality of it is you don’t get any points for being an underdog. You don’t get to [say], ‘Hey! We lost by five! You win!’ It doesn’t work like that in our world. You either win, or you lose the game, so our job is to put forth maximum effort with great attention to detail to make sure we’re in the mental frame of mind to compete and then, ultimately, perform in those critical moments.”