College Football Playoff: 5 biggest flaws of the current playoff system

1. Strength of schedule is put into question

According to collegefootballplayoff.com, strength of schedule is listed as one of the primary factors in determining the four-team playoff each year. However, because of what I describe as the “one-loss precedent,” teams essentially cannot drop more than one game during the regular season.

So, does this mean that teams should schedule higher strengths of schedule and risk losing two of those matchups? Or should they make schedules to favor them so they have a better chance of only taking one loss in a season?

Notre Dame fell victim to a high strength of schedule last season as it annually schedules games against some of the nation’s top teams such as USC, Miami, Georgia and Stanford. By season’s end, the Irish amassed three regular-season losses.

Because strength of schedule remains a major driving point in the committee’s selection process, teams have begun to arrange premiere out-of-conference contests before conference play begins. Hence, there has been an uptick in the number of quality matchups being played early in the season which are usually made a spectacle at large neutral sites.

While intra-division play remains constant in larger conferences, inter-division games rotate yearly as do most out-of-conference schedules unless there is a home-and-home agreement. Admittedly, some scheduling situations are unavoidable. For example, a team could potentially end up playing the two worst teams in the opposite division in their conference in a single year.

If teams are so worried about strength of schedule, then why do they still plan tune-up games early in the season? In some cases, teams schedule inferior opponents late in the season. Alabama, for instance, matched up with Mercer in the second to last week of the season last year.

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Either way, most programs are favoring a higher strength of schedule over risking a defeat, but perhaps if some of the cupcake games are eliminated, teams would be forced to play high-quality games and maybe then a two-loss team could make the playoff.