Rejoice, 9-3 SEC teams! The College Football Playoff awaits
The announcement came subtly, buried in the third paragraph of a midweek news release. The playoff selection committee, beginning this season, will weight strength of schedule metrics in an evolved way that should tend to more greatly benefit SEC teams.
The tweaks won't ensure playoff bids for three-loss SEC teams, and nothing technically prevented them from qualifying in the past, but this adjustment increases their qualifying chances. This pivot comes after the committee rejected three 9-3 bubble teams from the SEC last season in favor of Indiana and SMU – teams with superior records but inferior strength of schedule.
Here's what's changing in the committee's strength of schedule evaluation process:
These changes are a major win for the SEC and a culmination of the conference's offseason messaging campaign during which key stakeholders encouraged the committee to more heavily weight schedule strength.
Historically, the committee looks kindly upon the SEC, but the conference qualified only three teams for the inaugural 12-team playoff. If these metrics tweaks had been in place last season, the committee might have felt more compelled to admit one of the SEC's 9-3 teams instead of Indiana or SMU, teams that avoided bad losses while stockpiling wins against average to bad teams.
The committee's evaluation tweaks can help or hamper teams from any conference, but they're positioned to most greatly benefit the SEC, considering its number of teams that usually rank within the top 40. That creates a setup in which conference members play a bulk of games against top-40 opponents in any given season. The metrics changes also erect some dissuasion to loading up a schedule with cupcake opponents. (Looking at you, Indiana.)
The committee's rules tweaks ought to have included additional weight to head-to-head results. It boggles the mind that SMU and BYU each entered Selection Sunday with two losses, and SMU received the playoff's No. 11 seed while BYU got snubbed with a No. 17 ranking, despite SMU losing on its home field to BYU.
For all of the SEC's offseason squabbling, the committee's biggest err proved its seeding of Big Ten teams and not its rejection of three-loss teams. The committee flubbed by seeding Ohio State No. 8. The Buckeyes deserved a stronger seed, courtesy of wins against playoff qualifiers Penn State and Indiana, but the committee overvalued conference runners-up.
Ohio State beat Penn State on the road in November, but the committee seeded the Nittany Lions two spots ahead of Ohio State, because Penn State advanced to the Big Ten championship game and Ohio State didn't. That occurred, in part, because of Penn State's more accommodating schedule.
If you didn't know better, you'd have thought based off the committee's seeding that Penn State beat Ohio State, and not the other way around.
The committee also showed too much deference to SMU, the ACC runner-up. The Mustangs cashed in on a favorable schedule that avoided Clemson and Miami during the regular season.
I don't object to the committee's adjustment on how it plans to evaluate strength of schedule metrics, but any 9-3 team that lost twice to opponents that finished 6-6 still deserves ample scrutiny. (Looking at you, 2024 Alabama.)
Who ought to celebrate these selection rules tweaks? I give you Oklahoma. The Sooners will play seven opponents ranked in the preseason polls, including No. 1 Texas, No. 8 Alabama and No. 9 LSU.
With the wheels lubricated by an August news release, a 9-3 Sooners team could glide into the playoff.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network's national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
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