College Football Playoff adds ‘record strength’ metric following Indiana, SMU complaints

Last year, a vocal group of critics expressed their discontent with 11-1 Indiana and 11-2 SMU being selected for the College Football Playoff over Alabama and Ole Miss, both of whom finished 9-3 against stronger schedules.

Those grievances include the SEC and several college football analysts and announcers from ESPN, which owns the rights to the College Football Playoff broadcasts.

Message received, it seems, as the College Football Playoff announced Wednesday it had revised its election process, including new metrics to help the committee weigh the strength of schedule.

The new metric, known as record strength, will give enhanced credit to a team that performed well against a tougher schedule. It ups the credit for wins over quality teams while lessening the penalty for losses against quality opponents. Also, it will devalue wins over lesser quality teams. The previous strength of schedule metric was also adjusted to credit higher-level opponents.

“All of these modifications will help the selection committee as they rank the top 25 teams,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said in a statement. “We feel these changes will help construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performances and teams on the field during the regular season, and I want to thank our veteran selection committee members and data analytics groups for helping implement these changes.”

Along with that, the CFP adjusted its recusal rules to allow for further discussion about potential teams. Previously, members were recused from discussions around teams where any family member was currently receiving compensation. Now, recusal rules have been amended and split between full and partial. A partial recusal exists when a member has a relationship with a university, such as an immediate family member employed by the school, but not within the football program If a committee member is partially recused, they will be able to take part in those discussions, though they will not be able to vote on a team’s inclusion.

Here is the recusal list for CFP selection committee members. pic.twitter.com/woHJLJ66N1

— Ralph D. Russo (@ralphDrussoATH) August 20, 2025

While critics of the previous setup have been varied, the SEC has been leading the charge on the topic. Given that their schools often play harder schedules by virtue of being in the conference, they did not want to see their teams penalized for losses to some of the top teams in the nation while other schools with better records but weaker schedules got through.

“This metric rewards teams defeating high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty for losing to such a team. Conversely, these changes will provide minimal reward for defeating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to such a team,” the CFP release said.

There was also discussion last season about teams that didn’t play on championship weekend and whether or not their placement should be malleable depending on what happened in those games. The previous policy, which was not to change those teams’ placements, remains so.

“At the direction of the CFP management committee, the membership panel also reviewed the movement of idle teams from the penultimate to final ranking,” the release said. “The selection committee reaffirmed that movement in the final week should be evidence-based and did not recommend creating a formal policy prohibiting such movement.”