The College Football Playoff selection committee will announce its first of six rankings on Nov. 4 using enhanced metrics to help evaluate schedule strength and how teams perform against their slate, the CFP announced Wednesday.
In the current schedule strength metric, more weight will now be applied to games against strong opponents. A new, added metric of "record strength" will help the committee determine how teams performed against their schedule, rewarding those that beat high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty of losing to one. These changes will also provide minimal reward for beating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to one.
Historically, the selection committee typically has evaluated in this manner, but adding it to a computerized metric should help codify the process publicly. It could also incentivize athletic directors to continue to schedule marquee matchups between blue-blood programs without fear of being penalized for a loss in the committee meeting room. This is something some FBS commissioners have been publicly pushing for and the CFP has been working on over the past six months.
Still, it remains a subjective system, and none of the major components in the protocol -- strength of schedule, common opponents, head-to-head results and other circumstances such as injuries to key players -- are weighted.
"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."
The committee members will convene in person on Mondays and Tuesdays, revealing their rankings each week on ESPN. The second ranking will come out Nov. 11 (7-8 p.m. ET); the third Nov. 18 (8:30-9 p.m. ET); the fourth Nov. 25 (7-8 p.m. ET); and the fifth Dec. 2 (7-7:30 p.m. ET).
The final CFP rankings of the season will be released Dec. 7, known as Selection Day, starting at noon ET (ESPN), coinciding with the committee's reveal of the 12-team playoff bracket pairings and game sites.
The selection committee will move its new member orientation session from September to October. All 13 members will convene to review the first eight weeks of the season and familiarize themselves with the computer systems they will use for the voting process beginning in November. No ranking or voting will be conducted during the meeting.
At the direction of the CFP management committee, the membership panel also reviewed the movement of idle teams from the penultimate to final ranking. Last year, for example, South Carolina was idle during conference championship weekend and dropped a spot on Selection Day, even though its final résumé had been enhanced by a regular-season win against ACC champion Clemson (the Tigers jumped one spot to 16th). 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.
Procedural changes for this year also include an update to the recusal policy to establish two separate distinctions: a full recusal, consistent with the previous policy; and a partial recusal, which allows selection committee members to remain in the room for the discussion of teams they are partially recused from but continues to prevent them from voting during those rounds.
Committee members are partially recused if they have a secondary relationship with the school (such as an immediate family member employed by the school but outside of the football program or senior administration).
The following recusals will be in effect for this season: Appalachian State/Hunter Yurachek; Arizona State/Randall McDaniel (partial); Arkansas/Yurachek and Jeff Long (partial); Baylor/Mack Rhoades; Miami (Ohio)/David Sayler; Michigan State/Mark Dantonio; Middle Tennessee State/Chris Massaro; Nebraska/Troy Dannen; Nevada/Chris Ault; Notre Dame/Ivan Maisel (partial); Ole Miss/Wesley Walls (partial); SMU/Yurachek (partial); Stanford/Maisel (partial); UCLA/Ault (partial); Virginia/Carla Williams.