New CFP Schedule Metric
College Football Playoff Adds Conference-Strength Metric to Team Selection Process
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The College Football Playoff selection committee is expected to add a conference-strength metric in late November, giving it another way to compare teams’ league schedules both within and across conferences. The change addresses wide variations in schedules in expanded conferences, where teams can finish with similar records after facing different levels of competition. The metric would supplement, not replace, factors such as wins, overall strength of schedule and film evaluation, though it remains unclear how much it will affect selections. Supporters see it as added context; critics argue it is being introduced during the season and could give an advantage to teams from the SEC, whose coaches have questioned how the committee weighs schedules.
Key Points
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The articles cite examples of uneven schedules within expanded conferences: Duke reached the ACC Championship Game after playing one AP Top 25 team, while Texas Tech’s only ranked opponent in 2026 was No. 25 Houston.
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Georgia coach Kirby Smart argued that the system struggles to balance records against schedule difficulty: “I don't know that they can recognize and acknowledge, truly, and say strength of schedule matters and you're putting a team with one more loss in their column over a team that might have one less and they play the same schedule.”
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The new measure could be awkward to apply to Notre Dame, which does not play a conference schedule and is evaluated as an at-large team, though it will still be compared in strength-of-schedule discussions.
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One article notes that strength of schedule was already a meaningful selection factor: among the 2025 at-large teams, Ole Miss was the only one ranked outside the top 30 in schedule strength.
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Last season, BYU finished ahead of Texas and Vanderbilt in the CFP rankings despite SEC coaches believing those teams faced harder schedules; BYU also had fewer regular-season losses than either SEC team.
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