- The College Football Playoff committee announced changes to their selection metrics, emphasizing strength of schedule.
- The new metrics aim to reward wins against strong opponents and penalize losses against weak opponents.
Relax, everyone. The good folks on the College Football Playoff selection committee are on it.
New metrics, new ideas, new philosophy released Wednesday, Aug. 20, to choose who plays in the college football postseason.
To this I say: what in the world were they doing all along?
“All of these modifications will help the selection committee as they rank the Top 25 teams,” says CFP executive director Rich Clark.
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Before we go further, with the ghost of John Heisman as my witness, I swear I’m not making this up.
The CFP committee announced that in the current strength of schedule metric, more weight will be applied to games against strong opponents. Duh, you say.
Wait, it gets better.
A new additional metric of “record strength” will help the committee determine how teams performed against their schedule, rewarding those that beat high-quality opponents — while minimizing the penalty of losing to one.
Yeah, no $%#@, Sherlock, you say.
We’re not done yet.
The new changes will also – hold onto your striped overalls, Indiana fans – provide minimal reward for beating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to one.
Now I’m gonna puke.
Again I ask, what in the world has the selection committee been doing since the first playoff in 2014? These are no-brainer metrics, standards that should be engrained in the minds of every college football poll voter in the history of polls.
From the US LBM Coaches poll, to the AP Poll, to the CFP rankings, the foundational aspect of any ranking system should be weighted heavily on strength of schedule. It doesn’t take quantum physics to understand 9-3 in the SEC is a heavier lift than 11-2 in the ACC.
There should be zero hesitation in negating an 11-win season when the schedule consists of two games against teams with winning records — and one win in those two games.
But here we are, an offseason removed from the CFP selection committee choosing Indiana and SMU over any number of more valuable and worthy teams. And now we know why.
Because their records looked pretty.
Those 11 wins sure look shiny, that’s for sure. Not just anyone can run through a schedule of the worst Florida State team in half a century, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Duke, Boston College, Virginia and California.
To say nothing of a corresponding non-conference schedule of Nevada, Houston Christian, TCU and Brigham Young. Terrifying. Absolutely, terrifying.
Then SMU loses by 28 in the first round of the CFP.
Not just anyone can beat the worst Michigan team since the halcyon days of Brady Hoke, roll a putrid conference schedule and top it off with a non-conference schedule of Florida International, Western Illinois and Charlotte.
Then Indiana loses by 10 in the first round of the CFP after Notre Dame got bored and let off the gas.
I don’t know what’s more incredulous: that the CFP committee successfully shoveled Indiana and SMU at us, or that the committee now says they’ve got it figured out with some new and improved metrics they should’ve been weighing heavily all along.
The CFP committee says it has historically evaluated teams this way, and that making it a computerized metric helps simplify the process publicly.
To that, I say: no, you haven’t.
When you sell Indiana and SMU in 2024, you absolutely, positively, haven’t done it this way all along.
When you drop unbeaten and No.1 Georgia out of the CFP on the last poll of the 2023 season – after a three-point loss in the SEC championship game to No.8 Alabama, and after winning four previous games against ranked teams by an average of 27.5 points – there’s zero chance this has been the unwritten rule all along.
But now they’ve got it figured out. These new metrics will eliminate coaches and athletic directors on the selection committee bending ears about how “tough” it us to win 11 games — no matter the schedule.
Now they know the difference between pretty and powerful.
So help me, John Heisman.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
