LSU's Brian Kelly has a plan

How will the College Football Playoff Committee navigate what will likely be a crowded playoff bubble? Brian Kelly offered an idea: strength of scheduling rules.
Like Brian Kelly, Lane Kiffin says he's not too worried about style points, but Ole Miss still beats weaker opponents.
A 10-2 record would put a team in the conversation for an at-large playoff bid, but that's not a guarantee.

Look far enough into the fall horizon and you'll see a chaotic College Football Playoff selection scenario taking shape. Anyone who has come up with a playoff prediction sees it coming.

Every coach or fan of a Power Four team wants to believe that at least ten wins are enough to earn one of the seven total bids for the 12-team playoffs.

“Two (losses), you have a fighting chance,” LSU’s Brian Kelly told me before the season.

A chance, yes.

A guarantee? NO.

Twenty Power Four teams remain undefeated, and come December we'll likely have a crowded field of teams with one or two losses reaching out and expecting an overall bid.

How committee members will make these hair-raising decisions remains remarkably unclear. In the four-team playoff era, most playoff decisions were pretty cut and dry, with few difficult decisions. Last year's big debate between Alabama and Florida State was the exception rather than the rule.

In the 12-team format, the bubble will become much tighter, while the selection recommendations for the playoffs remain equally unclear.

Of course there are a few guidelines. The committee shall consider strength of schedule, head-to-head competition and results against common opponents without worrying about the margin of victory.

But as we saw last year, the rules get tricky when Alabama's playoff fate is on the line.

A committee member told ESPN last December that the committee was trying to predict whether Florida State would be good enough to win the national championship without injured quarterback Jordan Travis. The committee looked into a crystal ball and decided the Seminoles couldn't win it all and chose Alabama. Not to mention, nowhere in the College Football Playoff guidelines will you find any reference to predictive analysis, stargazing, or fortune telling.

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Playoff selection is a beauty contest determined by subjective people using shape-shifting rules.

The first CFP rankings will not be released until November 5th. Until then, we don't have much insight into how the committee will behave in this 12-team playoff era.

Of course, coaches have opinions about how teams should be selected, and those opinions are of course influenced by whatever factors work to their team's advantage.

Brian Kelly suggests the following: Let the strength of the schedule dictate

Kelly told me Wednesday that he believes the committee will prioritize the strength of the schedule over so-called style points.

In other words, he assumes that it would be more important to navigate a difficult schedule and finish, say, 10-2, than to set a comparative record with more overwhelming wins against a worse schedule.

His theory would work well for No. 13 LSU, currently 3-1.

It has already played — and lost — against No. 16 Southern California and will play No. 4 Alabama, No. 6 Ole Miss, No. 18 Oklahoma and No. 24 Texas A&M in the future.

“I really think,” Kelly said, “we've kind of embraced a new mindset that really takes precedence now in terms of the strength of the schedule, the depth of the SEC, the depth of the conferences.”

“I think now you can look at the strength of his game plans and really put them in line with the other teams that are vying for playoff opportunities and really come to the right conclusions. So I don’t know that putting 70 points on someone does much more for the voters.”

This all sounds very close, but how confident would Kelly be if LSU finishes 10-2, Miami is 12-1 as the ACC's runner-up, and Missouri is 11-1, vying for the final two spots?

No. 11 Missouri's schedule is considered the SEC's easiest. That could leave the Tigers vulnerable if they finish 10-2. What if it's 11:1? Would the committee really reject them and appoint another team from the same conference with a worse record?

We just don't know, so the safest bet would be to pile up style points and one-sided wins, in addition to a good schedule.

LSU plays South Alabama on Saturday, and while Kelly doesn't think getting to 70 points should be a playoff requirement, the committee tends to favor offense, so maybe you should go ahead and stay at 70 points.

Lane Kiffin, like Kelly, told me that he doesn't take style into account when training.

“Maybe we should,” Kiffin said. “I just didn’t do that.”

Still, Ole Miss sits in style at 4-0, with an average margin of victory of nearly 50 points.

Make it clear, Lane, because these style points can't hurt your case when the committee has to evaluate six SEC teams that finish with at least 10 wins.

Which SEC playoff contender appears to be the most vulnerable?

Would the committee accept six playoff teams from one conference? No rule prevents this, but probably not. Limit the SEC to five and reject the SEC team with the weakest schedule? Ugly deny the team that wins? When in doubt, pass the offer on to Nick Saban?

LSU's Brian Kelly has a plan

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