12-team College Football Playoff puts even more emphasis on schedule strength, for better or worse

Updated Aug. 29, 2024 3:32 p.m. ET

Associated Press

Y'all ain't played nobody!

It might as well be college football's slogan. Debates about strength of schedule are part of the fabric of the sport, like marching bands, cheerleaders and tailgating.

With the size of the College Football Playoff tripling in size from four teams to 12 this season — including seven at-large bids — expect the arguments over the relative difficulty of teams' schedules to increase exponentially.

The posturing and politicking has already begun.

"This is the NFL of college football in my mind,” Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said during Big Ten media days. At Southeastern Conference media days, the NFL was also invoked when the topic steered to schedules.

“As coaches we want to play the best. People forget that when you’ve spent time in the NFL, every week was like that," Georgia coach Kirby Smart said. "So when Texas and Oklahoma came into the conference, every schedule was going to get harder."

The debates aren't just about which conferences are the best. With super-sized conferences of 16-18 teams, the differences in strength of schedule within leagues can be significant.

The CFP selection committee uses a strength-of-schedule rating provided by SportSource Analytics that includes components such as wins and losses, scoring differential and game location.

Balancing who you played with how you played will be harder than ever.

“There's a weight on the committee that’s new. I want to see how the committee processes that,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said during spring meetings. “And my encouragement is that this, ‘Well, we have an undefeated team so they’re in' is not the standard. It never was the standard. Obviously, that stirred up controversy last year."

Toughest schedules in the Power Four

There are dozens of data-based rating systems to measure the relative strength of college football teams, and all have some type of schedule-rating component.

The AP took three systems — ESPN's SP+, FEI and KFord Ratings — and averaged their strength of schedule rankings for all 134 Bowl Subdivision teams to determine where each Power Four team's schedule ranks nationally (all games, not just conference games, are factored in).

Using those projections, SEC teams on average will be facing the toughest schedules this season.

The average strength-of-schedule ranking among the 16 SEC teams is 11.2, from Florida (a unanimous No. 1 among all three systems) to Missouri at 36.7.

Half the teams in the SEC have schedules with an average national ranking of 10 or better, including No. 1 Georgia at 3.7. No. 11 Missouri is the only SEC team with an average schedule-strength ranking below 25.3.

Rating the rest

The Big Ten, now including Southern California, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, is next with an average strength-of-schedule ranking of 26.9 among its 18 teams.

Purdue's 7.7 average ranking is the highest followed by No. 23 USC at 9. Big Ten favorite No. 2 Ohio State's average is 34. No. 3 Oregon's is 26.7.

The ACC and Big 12 are about the same. The 17-team ACC has an average strength of schedule ranking of 49.9. The 16-team Big 12's average ranking is 47.3.

Assessing strength of schedule

Straight up rankings can be deceiving. How to quantify the difference between facing the sixth-ranked schedule and 26th?

Brian Fremeau, the creator of FEI, does it three ways, asking three questions: How many games would an elite team lose facing a particular schedule? How many would a good team lose? How many would an average team lose?

AP used FEI's strength of schedule ratings based on good teams in its composite rankings, since good teams are going to be the ones in the CFP race.

Based on FEI projections, the difference between playing Georgia's schedule (rated 3.4 among the hardest in the nation) and Ohio State (34) is about one more loss for a good team against the Bulldogs' slate. The difference between Alabama's schedule and Big 12 favorite Utah's is about two losses for a good team against the Tide's.

If these schedule strength projections held — they will change throughout the season — it would then be reasonable to compare an 11-1 Utah to a 9-3 Alabama.

Reasonable to compare doesn't necessarily mean the one with the tougher schedule should automatically be ranked higher.

“I don’t judge a team on its schedule. I judge a team on how it performs against a schedule, or my system does. And that is a little more of a nuanced take then, ‘Well, we played a tougher set of opponents than you did, therefore, we’re better,’” Fremeau said. "There’s a bit of a balancing act between the two.”

Intraconference debates

The SEC and Big Ten are both bigger and division-less for the first time. That necessitated new tiebreaker procedures to determine which teams qualify for conference title games featuring the top two teams in the standings.

Within the guidelines is an acknowledgment that the rigor of conference schedules will vary when teams are playing barely half the league. After head-to-head and record vs. common opponents are used to break ties, both leagues go to results that favor the team that fared better against the better conference opponents they play.

The ACC, a year ahead of the the SEC and Big Ten in abandoning divisions, has a similar nod within its tiebreakers to strength of schedule.

ACC Associate Commissioner Michael Strickland said the conference used 10 years of data that measures the success of its football teams to help create a new schedule rotation that would be competitively balanced. But the ACC also to had weigh travel now that Stanford, California and SMU are members, as well as protecting some traditional annual rivalries.

The ACC's fourth two-team tiebreaker is combined winning percentage of conference opponents.

“Our head football coaches suggested that we insert that during our review process,” Strickland said.

The CFP choices

The CFP field announced Dec. 8 will be comprised of the five highest-ranked conference champions, regardless of league, and seven at-large selections. There is no limit to the number of at-large bids a conference can receive.

The most interesting comparisons for the CFP selection committee might end up being between the many conference rivals that do not play each other in the regular season.

What to do with a 10-2 Missouri and a 9-3 Alabama (composite strength-of-schedule ranking, 9.3)? Or Iowa (37) at 10-2 and Michigan (16) at 9-3? Over in the ACC, what would happen while assessing a 10-2 Virginia Tech (68) and a 9-3 Florida State (30.3)?

“Especially when we’re picking (seven) teams now, we’re looking at the loss column with a bit more scrutiny,” Fremeau said. “They're going to be debating teams like that with a one or possibly two-game difference in record, but a comparable difference in expected schedule rating and they’re going to have that debate about which one they value more.”

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Follow Ralph D. Russo at https://twitter.com/ralphDrussoAP

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