CFP Committee Reportedly Will Add Strength-of Conference Metric to Bracket Selection Process

In an effort to properly evaluate the degree of difficulty each team in a conference is facing, given the dramatically different schedules those teams face in a post-expansion world, the College Football Playoff selection committee is adding a "strength of conference" data point to its selection process.

ESPN's Heather Dinich provided the details:

With the Big Ten having 18 teams, the ACC fielding 17 and both the SEC and Big 12 having 16 teams—and those teams playing nine games each (the ACC is transitioning to the nine-game format in 2026—schools within the same conference play dramatically different schedules.

Some folks within the SEC were worried that going to nine conference games—without expanding the CFP—might ultimately punish teams within the conference who ended up with a tougher schedule.

"Now, you could say there may be regret in there going to nine," Georgia coach Kirby Smart told CBS Sports in May. "I'm not blaming the [CFP] committee, I'm blaming the system, because 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."

It's no secret that the SEC fancies itself the most competitive conference in college football, so those anxieties didn't come as much of a surprise (though the accuracy of that prevailing belief was certainly put to test during last year's postseason).

Just how much this new data point will matter—or who it might ultimately benefit—is hard to say, especially because the CFP committee doesn't divulge all of its internal metrics. Add it to the potential list of talking points and controversies once the CFP field is decided later in the season.