Scheduling Changes for College Football?

After a disappointing season, where Alabama failed to make the 12 team CFP, Alabama AD Greg Byrne made comments about future Out of Conference games. He made a post on X practically threatening that Alabama will have to reassess their Out of Conference games after the results from the CFP committee were made public. X users were quick to point out that all 3 losses Alabama suffered were SEC opponents and either failed to understand the logic behind Byrne’s comments or chose to use the timing of the post as a victory lap over a team that has dominated this sport for 15 years.

Alabama did lose 3 games this year to SEC opponents, and more likely than not if one of those results were flipped, they would find themselves in the CFP. Long story short, Alabama’s Out of Conference games had no impact on their post season hopes, now if you say that last part again, then you’ll understand why AD Greg Byrne made those comments. Alabama’s out of conference games had no effect on their post season standing, basically meaning that if they went undefeated in SEC play and loss all 4 OOC games, they would’ve missed the playoffs. Or, if they won all 4 OOC games and lost all a majority of their conference games (picture an Oklahoma team) they would not be in the playoff contention either.

Alabama and the SEC mention every year that playing in their conference is tough, and it’s harder, stronger, and deeper than any other conference in college football. Often during the final weeks of the season when big10 teams are playing their 9th conference game and you see Alabama has a matchup with Mercer during the middle of the playoff race, other fan bases make sure to point that out. Well, even with an OOC schedule of Mercer, USF, Wisconsin, and WKU, Alabama still had a top 10 Strength of Schedule. Matter of fact, every SEC team had a top 30 SOS this year, and the vast majority had a similar level of OOC opponents. SO where does Greg Byrne’s tweet really come into play?

If you look at the schedule for the 2027 Crimson Tide football program, you won’t see a single SEC opponent on it. That’s mostly because they haven’t built out the format for conference play moving forward with 16 teams, but you will find games vs Ohio State and West Virginia, due to the programs agreeing to a 2 game, home/away series. These are probably the games that AD Greg Byrne were referencing in his post, not as much the daunted WKU and Mercer matchup. The comments about reevaluating their OOC games is due to the fact that Alabama, Ole Miss, and South Carolina felt like they were snubbed from the playoffs for having 3 losses. In reality, South Carolina has the only reason to complain about those 3 losses being the factor, because 2 of 3 came from Alabama and Ole Miss, both of which are ranked in the top 20. But still, the precedence has been set by the CFP Committee, teams with 2 losses and a relatively low SOS will be favored over teams with 3 losses and a top ranked SOS.

Now it’s time for every college football fans favorite exercise, the hypothetical outcomes. If a team like Georgia this year who has 2 losses on the road to Ole Miss and Alabama, also lost to Clemson in the Season Opener and then failed to win or even make the SEC Conference Championship, would they be in the playoff? I think they would, I also think if one of Alabama’s losses was not to 6-6 Vanderbilt or Oklahoma, but was to SEC Champ Georgia they would be in. But why risk the chance of playing Ohio State and West Virginia when you know that there is a likely chance you will play 3-6 top 25 ranked teams? Well, there is a counter argument for this, and that is, if Alabama played Ohio State this year instead of Wisconsin and won, even with their bad losses to Oklahoma and Vanderbilt they would still be in as a 3-loss at large bid. But as previously mentioned, why take that risk?

These formats for OOC games have been increasingly around for the last 20 years, with teams looking forward to these matchups to flex their conference pedigree and also allow their players to be tested without affecting their conference standings. Oh, also they make the participating universities a lot of money, but is the reward worth the risk of missing out on the CFP where universities will also make money (and probably more)? It’s hard to tell right now, and we have no idea if Alabama and other Universities will follow through with this, this was just the first iteration of the 12-team College Football Playoff so there’s destined to be growing pains and lessons learned. But you let me know how you feel about this as a fan, do you enjoy when your team schedules challenging games against OOC opponents? Or would you rather your team play a cupcake and not risk their post season chances?