Two current Southeastern Conference teams finished the regular season 10-2 last year, but they would not have made a 12-team College Football Playoff.
CFP executive director Rich Clark demonstrated during a seminar Wednesday that Ole Miss and Oklahoma would have been left out of the expanded field, even though they were ranked higher than two teams that would have made the playoff.
Using the final 2023 rankings with current conference affiliations, Clark showed No. 14 Arizona and No. 23 Liberty would have made the playoffs instead. Arizona automatically qualified as the Big 12 champion, and Liberty finished as the highest-ranked Group of 5 school.
The hypothetical scenario has real implications going into the final month of the regular season. A handful of SEC teams could still finish 10-2 or better, but not all of them are guaranteed to make the first 12-team playoff.
Clark gave some insight into how those selections will be made and the way the committee will seed teams. The first CFP rankings come out Tuesday, and the final rankings are revealed Dec. 8 after the conference championship games.
Playoff sites
With pre-existing bowl affiliations still in place, the Southeastern Conference champion will play in the Sugar Bowl and the Big Ten champion will head to the Rose Bowl for the quarterfinals the next two seasons.
This year, the ACC champion will be in the Peach Bowl and the Big 12 champion will play in the Fiesta Bowl because the other sites are determined by proximity.
However, when the Orange Bowl becomes a quarterfinal site next season, the ACC winner will go there because of its contractual ties to the game. That means the Big 12 champion will likely go to the Cotton Bowl in 2025. Next season, the Peach Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl are the semifinal games.
Even though upsets could happen, Clark said the semifinal sites will be determined by proximity to the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds. For example, top-seeded Michigan would have played in the Cotton Bowl for the 2023 semifinals. Even if the Wolverines had lost, whoever emerged from their half of the bracket would have still played in the Cotton Bowl.
Clark said the semifinal sites would not change after being determined on selection day, even if the top seeds lose in the quarterfinals or a lower-seeded team gains a home field advantage.
“Once we establish those locations at the initial bracket … that’s it,” Clark said. “We’re going to keep it right there because if you start (changing them during the playoffs), I think you run into situations where you could really jumble up the whole bracket layout and where teams are played.”
Rematches will happen
Clark said the selection committee will not “manipulate” seeding to avoid rematches. In fact, he anticipates there will be teams that play each other as many as three times: once in the regular season, once in the conference championship and again in the playoffs.
“I imagine we’re going to see some of that in this playoff,” Clark said. “We’re not going to change the seeding to avoid those rematches. We’re going to seed them how they’re ranked, and then we’re going to bracket them how they’re seeded. That is going to happen.”
Selection factors
Clark said the selection committee will still consider win-loss records, head-to-head results, performance against common opponents, the eye test and strength of schedule as it tries to determine the “best” — not the “most-deserving” — teams.
Clark was asked repeatedly about how the committee determines strength of schedule now that the major conferences have expanded. How does that metric get determined, and what is its importance in the overall evaluation?
“That is a very important metric,” Clark said. “It’s not the only metric, but it is an important one because it cuts across conferences, across teams’ schedules and it gives us a look so that we can compare teams a bit more accurately based on the strength of their schedule. I think it helps us to look at teams in a more fair manner.”
Clark said the committee uses strength of schedule rankings provided by Sports Source Analytics. CFP director of communications Brett Daniels added the list is made through game results, a capped scoring differential and game location, among other statistics. The rankings are not publicly available.
On selection day, Clark said he believes teams will not be penalized for losing their conference championship game. He said the committee is “sophisticated enough” to understand the title games include the top two teams in the league, even if the third-place team has the same regular season record.
“I will say it depends on what the loss looks like, it depends on who we’re talking about as the third-place team,” Clark said. “They will take that all into consideration. I honestly don’t think that a team would be unduly penalized if they lost in a conference championship game.”
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