There’s no question that the College Football Playoff selection committee has a difficult job. And one where it’s virtually impossible to please all interested parties.
In the current format, just 12 college football teams reach the playoffs, which has become the ultimate sign of success or failure for a program’s season. Coaching changes are decided based on playoff appearances. Conference bragging rights, both in the public discourse and in deliberations, are determined based on playoff appearances.
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Given the competing priorities at play, there’s little chance of keeping everyone happy. There will always be a 13th best team in the country. Or a Power 4 school that feels like they missed out to allow a Group of 6 school to reach the tournament. Conferences will advocate for more of their member teams to be included. Group of 6 schools will argue that they deserve to be included after a good season, even if their schedules can’t match up to top teams.
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It’s a guarantee that their choices will lead to disagreement, debate, and some level of unhappiness. Especially because the rankings are based on human evaluation, and humans make mistakes, are biased, or have their own individual priorities and valuations.
Which is what makes the opacity of the committee’s process and evaluation tools so frustrating.
For years, committee members have spoken about how they incorporate strength of schedule and resume into their deliberations and their top 25 poll. But there’s little transparency as to how they determine the strength of schedule and resume. It’s nice to say it, it’s another to show your work. Are they creating their own metrics based on wins and losses against, say, AP ranked teams? Or is it just eye test? Or do they use more advanced, computer-driven analytics? Who knows?
Well, the committee revealed recently that they’re now adding another metric to help inform their discussions: strength of conference. Oh good, more metrics with little transparency that will lead to more debate and disagreement.
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Heather Dinich from ESPN reported that the committee would now incorporate this new metric to help separate teams within the league.
“The CFP selection 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,’ she posted on X. “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.”
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Sure. Sounds reasonable enough. But what’s it based on?
How are they evaluating which teams have faced the “strongest” conference opponents? Win-loss record? AP Top 25 poll appearances? Random eye test? Computer analytics? How do they determine how to separate teams with comparable records in different conferences?
Again, the questions that the committee wants answers to, evaluating different schedules and conferences, are all valuable and important debates. The issue is that there’s no transparency on how they’re going to do it.
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Some fans look at wins and losses or head-to-head matchups. Some like to use “ranked wins” or ranked games, though those can often be misleading based on when those games happen. For example, Texas A&M counts as a ranked win for LSU, even though it’s clear the Aggies are far from a top 25 team. Others like to use analytics-based systems that are more objective and less biased toward a specific school or conference.
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That should be the preference; remove bias, evaluate teams objectively, combine metrics to find the “best” teams that fit the criteria and limit the amount of campaigning and importance of the typically awful AP Poll. That should be the goal. But will it be the outcome?
We’ll find out in a few months. Then spend the months after arguing about it.
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