College Football Playoff Committee announces new strength of schedule criteria

Ever since the College Football Playoffs were created, there have been discussions about what the most important criteria are for deciding which teams get in. Of all the criteria they use to select the 12 playoff teams, strength of schedule gets brought up the most.

On Wednesday, the College Football Playoff committee announced they will be changing the way they measure a team's strength of schedule, which will essentially reward teams who play tougher schedules and punish those who play easier schedules.

The College Football Playoff selection committee announces the changes to its strength of schedule metric. pic.twitter.com/POIeJ0wMwe
— Brandon Marcello (@bmarcello) August 20, 2025

With this new system, the CFP committee has added more weight to "games against stronger opponents." They have also added a new metric called "record strength," which will "go beyond a team's schedule strength to assess how a team performed against that schedule."

In a nutshell, the new record strength metric will reward teams more for defeating high-quality opponents while limiting the punishment for losing that same game. Say Baylor were to defeat No. 16 SMU on the road in week two. Their resume would get an enormous boost. And if they were to lose that game, it would not count nearly as much as losing to a team like UCF.

Conversely, if Baylor were to beat Samford, their resume would hardly improve. And if they were to lose to Samford, that would be catastrophic for their CFP hopes.

From a bird's eye view, nothing really changed. Wins against high-quality teams count more than wins against low-quality teams, and losses to high-quality teams won't hurt nearly as much as losses to low-quality teams. The difference is how each win/loss is weighed when it comes to selecting teams for the CFP, which could end up being the difference in one team getting in or getting left out this year.

College Football Playoff Troph — Jan 21, 2025; Atlanta, GA, USA; The College Football Playoff National Championship trophy at press conference at The Westin Peachtree Plaza, Savannah Ballroom. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

This change comes in the same year that the CFP will go to a straight seeding model. Instead of the top four conference champions receiving the top four seeds and an automatic bye, the four highest-ranked teams in the country - decided by the committee - will receive the bye. The five highest-ranked conference champions will still receive automatic bids.

We'll have to wait and see how this new strength of schedule system works, but it feels like a step in the right direction.

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