The College Football Playoff selection committee is set to add a new statistical measure in late November that would factor a conference’s overall schedule strength into how individual teams are ranked, according to ESPN’s Heather Dinich.
Dinich reported that the committee “will incorporate another data point in late November that helps determine the strength of each conference based on the schedule strength of each team in its league. It will help separate teams in the SAME LEAGUE with similar records based on the strength of their conference opponents. (Ex: PSU doesn’t play Oregon, Ohio State, or IU) It will also help separate teams with comparable records in different conferences based on how tough their league opponents were.”
Dinich described the addition as an “inside baseball” type of statistic. “This is an ‘inside baseball’ type stat that won’t trump quality wins, schedule strength and record strength and what the committee sees on film. But it will put a number to answer the question: how tough is the daily grind in each league? It’s not even equal within them,” she said.
Individual strength of schedule is already a factor in committee evaluations. The new wrinkle folds in the performance of a team’s conference as a whole, a change that stands to help two- and three-loss SEC teams whose rankings would rise simply because of the league they play in, regardless of their own results on the field.
ESPN broadcasts nearly every CFP game and holds the rights to SEC football, giving the network a direct financial stake in how the conference fares in playoff selection.
Fans have long operated under the assumption that teams are judged on their own wins, losses and opponents. Under this change, a team’s value could be inflated or deflated based on how tough its conference was as a whole that season — a factor that has nothing to do with what any single team actually did on the field. Alabama having a strong season does not make Vanderbilt a better team, and Georgia’s success does not improve Oklahoma’s résumé.
Critics of the move argue it could accelerate the timeline toward an expanded 24-team playoff, as conferences outside the SEC look for ways to protect their own teams’ chances at inclusion once this metric is in play.
