ESPN’s CFP Rankings Show Returns Amid Scrutiny, New Criteria

The College Football Playoff committee will release its first rankings of the 2026 season on Tuesday night, and an adjustment to the established criteria is at the center of the initial projected 12-team field. 

The committee has announced an enhanced metric called “Strength of Conference Enhancement,” which will put a greater emphasis on the difference in schedule strength within a single conference. For example, if two teams have the same record but Team A has played a tougher in-conference schedule than Team B, the deference would belong to Team A. 

It is technically not a new metric, but the newfound emphasis comes against the backdrop of coaches’ complaints, particularly in the SEC, about the value of strength of schedule regarding how teams are ranked weekly. This season is the first where SEC teams play a nine-game conference schedule. 

“I felt like a nine-game would help and be beneficial. That was with a four-game playoff,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said at the SEC spring meetings in May. “Now, you could say there may be regret going to nine. … I’m not blaming the committee. I’m blaming the system. I don’t know that they can recognize and acknowledge strength of schedule matters, and you’re putting a team with one more loss in their column over a team that might have one less, and they play the same schedule. I don’t know that they’re ever going to be able to find a format that works in that.” 

The enhancement is applicable to all conferences, not just the SEC. In the Big 12, the conference’s top three teams—No. 3 Utah, No. 7 BYU , and No. 13 Texas Tech—only share one common opponent, TCU, despite playing in a 16-team conference. But the SEC has the largest number of teams that could be affected in the initial rankings. 

Currently, there are six SEC teams with two losses in the top 20 of the AP Top 25: Alabama, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee, and Texas. Of these teams, there have been four head-to-head matchups with four more games remaining. How the committee differentiates these teams to date, and how much Strength of Conference Enhancement is a factor will be notable. 

State of the Rankings Show 

This year’s metric enhancement is the latest move by the Playoff committee to bring more transparency and efficiency to its process. The selection committee has faced public scrutiny over the last several years for its decision making, including placing Miami over Notre Dame in the final rankings last year, Florida State’s exclusion as a 13–0 team in 2023, among other inconsistencies over the weekly reveals, which are broadcast on ESPN. 

This is the third consecutive season in which there has been a change to the selection process. 

• 2024: The Playoff field expanded from four teams to 12 teams. 
• 2025: Removed the automatic first-round byes for the top four conference champions and adjusted strength-of-schedule metrics.
• 2026: Guaranteed automatic bids for all four Power 4 conference champions, and Notre Dame will receive an automatic bid if ranked in the top 12 according to a memorandum of understanding signed in 2024. 

“I think obviously there’s human bias, and how do you get over that?” Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert, whose team is ranked No. 14 in the AP Top 25 poll, told reporters this week. “I don’t know where the computers have us, all that type of stuff, but I think there is some human bias to different things and different angles. At the end of the day, winning matters. I get who you play, where you play, how you play. I would love all ex-coaches to be in that room, but I’m sure it matters where that coach coached. There are so many different things that go into that. Those are out of our control.” 

The criticism reached a tippingpoint last season, calling into question whether premature rankings, and the show itself, are needed and viable moving forward. A year earlier, ESPN’s top college football analyst, Kirk Herbstreit, stopped appearing on the weekly rankings reveal, claiming that he had “retired” from the show. However, under the CFP media rights agreement, five rankings reveal shows are required in the lead-up to the CFP bracket reveal on the Sunday after conference championship games. 

Despite some public distrust, viewership numbers suggest that it remains a popular viewing product. By mid-November last year, the College Football Playoff Rankings Show drew more than 1.5 million viewers, making it one of ESPN’s most-watched studio programs by a considerable margin.