How does the College Football Playoff committee set its Top 25? What it's like inside the room

For 10 years, the College Football Playoff selection committee had it easy.

Now in a 12-team era, the hard work really begins .

Over the first decade of the CFP, the committee really only had two hard calls to make in finalizing its Playoff field: including Ohio State in the top four at the expense of Baylor and TCU in 2014, and leaving Florida State out in favor of Alabama in 2023.

Neither situation will happen again because a power conference champion with double-digit wins will never be excluded in a 12-team format that includes spots for the five highest-ranked conference champions.

But from Tuesday night on, more committee decisions than ever before will be under scrutiny because there is more on the line within the rankings from spots in the field to first-round byes, home games and the seeding itself.

So how does it work? What process does the committee go through? GO DEEPER How exactly will College Football Playoff home games work? In late September, I took part in the CFPs annual mock committee session, held in the actual room where the committee meets in Grapevine, Texas.

It was the second time Id participated but the first time with the 12-team model in mind.

I came away with three major takeaways.

1.

The committee rarely unanimously agrees on something.

Each Tuesday night, the committee chair (Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel takes over the role this year) meets the media to explain the rankings, and his comments are often presented as if the 13 committee members came to the same conclusion.

They often dont.

The selection criteria are weighted differently by different people.

Theres no one piece that matters most.

Advertisement In our session, we simulated selecting the Top 25 for the 2023 regular season under 2024 conferences and rules.

I argued for Washington to be the No.

1 ranked team over Michigan because I felt it had more good wins as I wrote at the time and a back-and-forth ensued within the group.

Ultimately, my case won out.

But I didnt agree with every spot in the final rankings.

When we debated Alabama and Florida State for No.

4, I voted Florida State fourth, but Alabama got the spot (more on that in a minute).

Some insight into the process: The committee doesnt rank teams 1-25 all at once.

They rank three teams at a time to set the top nine, then four at a time for Nos.

10-25.

Each person submits their top 30 teams, in any order, into a computer.

Teams that get at least three votes end up in the big pool (usually a group of about 35-40).

From that pool, members rank their top six teams on a secret personal ballot, the consensus top six is presented as a smaller pool, and they debate and secret-vote teams 1-3 from there, with the consensus becoming the final ranking.

The leftover three teams from the consensus top six go into the next pool, and the process repeats from there.

(Committee members must recuse themselves from the discussion of certain schools, such as alma maters or current employers.) Only after the committee ranks all 25 teams do they go into the bracket.

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There is no rule preventing rematches within the 12-team bracket.

The NCAA basketball tournaments follow bracket-building rules designed to avoid rematches from the regular season in the early rounds.

That wont be the case in the CFP, which could loom large with the SEC and Big Ten expected to account for more than half the field in some years.

Would the committee look at its final bracket after ranking 25 teams, notice rematches in the first or second rounds and decide to flip something? They say they cant and wont, and we only have their word for that.

It is possible to re-debate teams after ranking the 25, should a member want to raise a particular disagreement.

We did that just once due to limited time, moving Penn State down and Missouri up.

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Strength of schedule matters enormously, but not in the way you might think.

Yes, there is a ranking of schedule strength within the SportSource Analytics data given to all members, but thats not what stands out.

The most valuable tool available in the committees computer program is the ability to compare two to four teams side-by-side with data.

While theres all kinds of helpful information available, from a teams record against Top 25 teams to its relative offense and defense (meaning how a team performed compared to an opponents opponents), the schedule comparison is the metric that jumps out.

The program displays a teams schedule with a number to the left of each opponent: Sports-References Simple Rating System (SRS), a rudimentary ranking of every FBS team.

SRS is only used to help compare teams schedules, not as a standalone metric to help determine the field.

The higher the opponents SRS, the greener their number square; the lower the team is ranked, the redder its square.

(All FCS teams are ranked equally as the weakest-possible opponent.) Other columns next to each opponent show the score and a green W or a red L.

In this side-by-side comparison, you have the option of reordering the schedules from best opponents to worst, and that heavily influenced the mock committees opinions.

Its impossible to ignore when one team has many more green squares on its schedule than another, even if it has lost more games.

This, I suspect, is one reason Group of 5 teams often end up lower in the CFP rankings than they are in the polls.

G5 teams by their nature have weaker schedules.

Their columns show less green than any Big Ten or SEC team, and you see it.

I wont call it an inherent bias in the system, but the SRS rating of the opponent is more visually striking than the boxes showing the game result or the score.

During the session, I suggested to the CFP that they flip that contrast.

Advertisement When we put 2023 Florida State and Alabama side by side, FSU had more red and Alabama had more green.

Very quickly, I could see how the actual committee ultimately made its decision to go with the Tide, especially with Seminoles quarterback Jordan Travis season-ending injury hanging over everything.

I voted for FSU, but it didnt matter as the Noles got the No.

3 seed in the 12-team bracket anyway.

I should also note we only did this mock session for a few hours.

Actual committee members conduct this discussion over a span of days and have tablets with 90-minute cutups of games.

They watch the games and look at all kinds of data, not just SOS.

Other media members and I have asked the CFP if they will share their strength of schedule data to the public, or at least provide more public transparency.

To this point, they wont, though CFP and conference sources said the CFP will, for the first time, send all 134 team sheets containing their full suite of metrics to the conferences the Tuesday night after the final rankings come out.

I suspect strength of schedule will be one of this years biggest talking points because of the wide gaps in schedule quality not just between the expanded Power 4 conferences but within them.

As far as the bracket, you may already know by now that the four first-round byes go to the four highest-ranked conference champions, not the teams ranked Nos.

1-4 in the Top 25.

The quarterfinal bowl sites are tied to conferences for the next two years.

If the real final 2023 rankings had been applied to 2024s format with 2024s conference makeups, No.

1 seed Michigan wouldve played its second-round game at the Rose Bowl (Big Ten tie-in), and No.

2 seed Texas wouldve played in the Sugar Bowl (SEC/Big 12 tie-in).

The Orange Bowl has a tie-in with the ACC, but its a semifinal this year, so that wont come into play.

The Fiesta, Peach and Cotton Bowls dont have conference tie-ins (the Cotton is also a semifinal this year).

The semifinal bowls placement on the bracket is also pre-determined based on proximity to the No.

1 and No.

2 seeds.

So again, using 2023s final rankings, the Cotton Bowl would have been on Michigans side of the bracket due to location, and the Orange Bowl would have been on Texas side, even if neither of those teams made the semifinal.

That way, those bowl organizations can work and prepare with a select group of teams and be ready for all possible outcomes.

The CFP rankings have never been as important as they are now.

In most years, the consensus top four was easy, but theres much more on the line in a bigger bracket and with home games highlighting the first round.

Theres no perfect way to do this in such a large sport, and theres no conspiracy to keep a particular team or conference down.

Advertisement But coming off last years FSU controversy and with the Big Ten and SEC discussing a potential larger field in 2026 with additional automatic bids that would lessen the committees role, that group of 13 has never been under more pressure to get it right.

If thats even possible anymore.

(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb for The Athletic ; Photo: Chris Vannini for The Athletic ).

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