Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark attended a College Football Playoff management committee meeting in Chicago in September, where conference commissioners were briefed on the metrics used by the Playoff selection committee.
“Strength of schedule was reiterated more than once as a key metric,” he said Wednesday. “I haven’t seen that come into play as much as it should be.”
Yormark is miffed that the Mountain West’s Boise State, ranked No. 10, stands to earn a first-round bye instead of the Big 12’s champion — either No. 15 Arizona State or No. 16 Iowa State. (In the expanded 12-team field, the five highest-ranked conference champions are automatically in, and the four highest-ranked of that group earn the bye.)
He’s not alone in that observation.
There have been signs throughout the last five weeks’ rankings that this year’s committee is placing less emphasis on strength of schedule than in seasons past. Either that, or we’re just noticing it for the first time now that 12 teams qualify instead of four.
No. 2 Texas (11-1, 7-1 SEC), with zero Top 25 wins, has been consistently ranked above Georgia (10-2, 6-2 SEC), which has three of them, including at Texas. No. 3 Penn State (11-1, 8-1 Big Ten) has one Top 25 win and is three spots above Ohio State (10-2, 7-2), which has two top-10 wins, including at Penn State. Heck, go all the way to the bottom of the rankings and you’ll find No. 20 UNLV (10-2, 6-1 MWC), with zero Top 25 wins, two spots ahead of Syracuse (9-3, 5-3 ACC), which has two Top 25 wins — including at UNLV.
In all three cases, the higher-ranked team has the lower strength of schedule evaluation on the major published ratings (Sagarin, FPI, etc.), but are still ordered by number of losses. Much like how No. 10 Boise State, 11-1, has the 89th-ranked schedule on Jeff Sagarin’s ratings but is five spots above 10-2 Arizona State (38th) and Iowa State (42nd).
The Sun Devils and Cyclones will meet Saturday in a Playoff play-in game, but the winner could be seeded eight spots below Boise State and play a first-round road game while the Broncos get a bye.
“I’m uncomfortable that you’re saying the winner of the Big 12 can’t catch Boise State unless Boise State loses,” said Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard. “Strength of schedule, all the metrics … the only thing they have that we don’t is they’re 11-1 and we’re 10-2. If that’s the case, then play the easiest schedule. If you’re 11-1 or 12-0, you’re golden. You’re in. Because (the committee) just showed what they’re going to do with you.”
Lest you think this is all a wild conspiracy theory peddled by some Big 12 shills, Playoff committee chairman Warde Manuel all but affirmed this stance during a media teleconference following the Nov. 26 rankings show. He was asked how the committee “weighs (teams’) wins versus maybe lack of opportunity for good wins.”
“Teams can only play the schedule that’s in front of them,” said Manuel. “So we take the stance that we’re going to really look at these games, we’re going to look at the stats, we’re going to look at the strength of schedule, but we’re also going to look at how teams are performing against the competition that they have.
“From our perspective, if it was just about strength of schedule, we wouldn’t be needed. You could just take at the end of the season the top 12 teams with the highest strength of schedule and put them against each other.”
Manuel’s comments raised eyebrows with people familiar with the origins of the Playoff. When the commissioners designed the first four-team Playoff more than a decade ago, they opted for an NCAA basketball-style committee to select the teams because they believed traditional Top 25 polls did not do enough to reward tough schedules. Thus, why strength of schedule is literally listed as the very first item on the CFP’s own published “Selection Committee Protocol.”
Pollard, who spent five years serving on the NCAA men’s basketball committee, is struck by how much more subjective the football process seems to be compared with basketball’s. Discussion in the weeks and months leading up to March Madness revolves primarily around a team’s performance against opponents ranked in “Quad 1” and “Quad 2” of the NET computer rankings (which are published). He said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s vice president for basketball, specifically stresses to the committee that “the eye test is not something we say or use.”
The CFP equivalent to Gavitt is executive director Rich Clark, who succeeded the retired Bill Hancock this summer. Clark, a retired military officer, was previously superintendent for the U.S. Air Force Academy. Manuel is in his first season as committee chairman and six of the 13 members are new this season. That’s a lot of change, all occurring in the same year that the bracket is expanding from four teams to 12.
“The basketball committee has years of experience trying to decide who’s 32 and 33 — and it’s hard,” said Pollard. “For the first time, the CFP committee is having to do that. So I’m trying to give them some grace.”
Ironically, when the committee made its most important decision of the season Tuesday, ranking 9-3 Alabama ahead of 10-2 Miami for what could become the last at-large berth in the field — finally, numbers mattered. Manuel laid out several hard facts in the case for the Crimson Tide: a better Top 25 record (3-1 vs. 0-1) and a better record against winning opponents (5-1 vs. 4-2). And yes, Alabama’s schedule strength is superior to Miami’s per every major outlet.
“I just want consistency,” said Pollard, who got into a social media feud on X with SMU counterpart Rick Hart shortly after Tuesday’s rankings show. “What appears to me is strength of schedule wasn’t the determining factor for SMU, Indiana and Boise State; it was (being) 11-1. I don’t have to like that, but if that’s the case, then OK, be consistent. And if that’s the case, how do you justify Miami?”
Manuel had a much kinder assessment of Miami back on Nov. 5, when the ‘Canes were still 9-0. Asked why they were five spots ahead of 8-0 BYU at the time, Manuel said Pollard’s least favorite words: “Eye test.”
Eye test may be the biggest factor lifting Boise State, which boasts potential Heisman winner Ashton Jeanty and gave No. 1 Oregon one of its toughest games of the season back in Week 2. Most college football followers have respect for the Broncos.
But as Yormark notes, the Ducks were also Boise’s only Power 4 opponent all season — and the Broncos lost.
“In no way,” he said, “should a Group of 5 champion be ranked above our champion.”
(Photo from Arizona State’s 49-7 win against Arizona: Kelsey Grant / Getty Images)
