Smells a little fishy, doesn’t it?
Three weeks into the college football season, the College Football Playoff reportedly has a new metric for its selection committee to consider: strength of conference.
According to ESPN’s Heather Dinich, the new metric will be introduced to the CFP selection committee beginning in late November and is designed to help committee members evaluate the strength of a team’s conference schedule, both compared to teams in other leagues and teams within its own conference.
On its face, that doesn’t sound unreasonable.
College football now has massive 16-team conferences where schedules can vary dramatically. Two teams can finish with identical conference records despite playing completely different levels of competition.
But here’s where Big 12 fans have every right to raise an eyebrow.
The Timing Is Awfully Convenient
This change comes after an offseason in which SEC coaches were very vocal about how strength of schedule was being evaluated by the CFP.
And one of their specific complaints involved the Big 12.
BYU finished ahead of both Texas and Vanderbilt in last season’s CFP rankings despite the SEC programs playing schedules that league coaches believed were more difficult. BYU also had fewer regular-season losses than either team.
Now, months later, we’re getting a new metric that specifically gives the committee more information about the strength of conferences and conference schedules.
What a coincidence.
And let’s be clear: The SEC doesn’t need anyone to pretend it’s a bad football conference.
In fact, through the first three weeks of the 2026 season, the SEC has backed up its reputation on the field. The league is 10-2 against Power Four opponents, easily the best record of any major conference. The Big 12 is 5-7 in those games, which is the second-best Power 4 record.
If an SEC team has a better résumé than a Big 12 team in December, put the SEC team in.
But that’s different from creating another data point that could essentially tell the committee, “Remember, this team played in the SEC.”
What Could This Mean for the Big 12?
This is where Brett Yormark and the Big 12 should be paying very close attention.
The concern isn’t Texas Tech going 12-0 and somehow getting left out of the College Football Playoff because it plays in the Big 12.
It’s the bubble.
Imagine an 11-2 Big 12 runner-up being compared to a 9-3 or 10-2 SEC team for one of the final at-large spots.
The Big 12 team may have more wins and fewer losses. It may have quality victories. It may have played for a conference championship.
But now there’s another piece of information in the committee room designed specifically to provide context about the strength of the conferences those teams played in.
If the SEC grades significantly better than the Big 12, which team does that help?
That’s the question.
And we’ve already seen how important the perception of conference strength can become when the committee starts splitting hairs between teams with similar résumés.
Haven’t We Been Measuring Schedule Strength Already?
This might be my biggest issue with the entire thing.
College football isn’t exactly suffering from a shortage of metrics.
Strength of schedule exists. Strength of record exists. The committee evaluates quality wins, losses, head-to-head results and championships, among other factors.
Now we need strength of conference, too?
There’s a legitimate argument that the committee needs better ways to account for dramatically different schedules inside these enormous conferences. An SEC team that plays Georgia, Texas, Alabama and Ole Miss obviously shouldn’t have its conference schedule viewed exactly the same as an SEC team that avoids most of the league’s best teams.
The same is true in the Big 12.
But evaluating the specific schedule a team played makes far more sense to me than giving additional weight to the overall strength of the logo on the team’s jersey.
Big 12 Fans Have Every Right to Be Skeptical
Maybe this ends up being much ado about nothing.
Maybe the metric provides useful information to the committee and has little impact on the actual rankings.
But college football has spent the last several years moving toward a world where the SEC and Big Ten hold more money, more television power and more influence over the future of the sport.
So when a new CFP metric arrives after SEC coaches spent an offseason complaining about how their schedules were being evaluated, people in the Big 12 are naturally going to ask questions. CBS Sports characterized the change as coming amid those SEC scheduling concerns.
And they should.
The Big 12 doesn’t need special treatment from the College Football Playoff.
It shouldn’t want any.
Just make sure the SEC isn’t getting it, either.
