Considering their daunting schedules, Florida or Oklahoma could hold the College Football Playoff committee’s feet to the fire in 2025.
Playoff has never included a 9-3 team, but Gators or Sooners might threaten to be the first if they could achieve that mark.
SEC waged an offseason messaging campaign touting its strength of schedule and imploring the playoff selection committee to give it more credence.
Billy Napier chuckled when I asked him about Florida’s schedule. What else could the Gators coach do but laugh?
“I don’t have control over” the schedule, Napier said in May as we chatted in a hotel basement during the SEC’s spring meetings.
Hard to imagine any coach asking for a schedule like the one Napier’s Gators will play. Florida will face seven teams expected to be ranked in the preseason US LBM Coaches poll. With non-conference games against Miami and Florida State in the mix, the Gators are one of three SEC teams that will play 10 games against Power Four competition.
“Big-picture wise, it can be an advantage or a disadvantage,” Napier said of the schedule, “based off” how the College Football Playoff committee makes its at-large selections.
Oklahoma’s Brent Venables can relate. His Sooners will face seven, maybe even eight, teams likely to be ranked in the preseason Top 25.
Florida and Oklahoma serve as a backbone of the SEC’s quest for the playoff committee to more heavily weight strength of schedule when making at-large selections. The SEC continued its strength-of-schedule drumbeat this week during the conference’s media days.
Why Florida, Oklahoma could challenge playoff committee
The SEC positioned three 9-3 teams for playoff consideration last season based on schedule strength, but neither Alabama, Mississippi nor South Carolina earned selection.
On paper, at least, Florida and Oklahoma will endure a more intense gantlet than those 9-3 SEC teams navigated in 2024.
A 9-3 team from the SEC qualifying for the playoff would vindicate the conference’s relentless messaging campaign touting its strength of schedule and as it implores the committee to more heavily weight those metrics.
In truth, the committee traditionally values the SEC’s strength of schedule, but Alabama, Ole Miss and South Carolina each presented résumés that were too flawed a year ago. Also, it became difficult to distinguish which of those three 9-3 teams most deserved playoff consideration. The committee opted for none of them.
Lessons from Alabama, Ole Miss not earning playoff selection
I thought the committee erred by awarding the final at-large bid to SMU, which lacked a signature victory despite its 11-2 record, but I didn’t interpret the committee’s choice as a rule that it would never take a three-loss SEC team instead of a one- or two-loss team from another conference.
Florida and Oklahoma, with their capable lineups but daunting schedules, are candidates to become the playoff’s first 9-3 qualifier. Each touts one of the nation’s most talented quarterbacks, in Florida’s DJ Lagway and Oklahoma’s John Mateer, a Washington State transfer. Mateer highlighted Oklahoma’s portal plunder that transformed its roster after a losing season.
Alabama, too, could present a more compelling playoff case if it finished at 9-3 this season, compared to its three-loss résumé from 2024.
The Crimson Tide will play 10 Power Four opponents, after facing nine last year. Two of Alabama’s three losses last season came against teams that finished the regular season 6-6. Ole Miss, like Alabama, secured a marquee victory against Georgia, but the Rebels lost at home to woebegone Kentucky.
Strength of schedule influences the committee’s rankings, but losses to bad or mediocre teams become an anchor on a résumé. Interestingly, Oklahoma and Florida landed crippling blows to SEC’s quest for four playoff bids last year, by upsetting Alabama and Ole Miss, respectively, in late November.
Let Alabama and Ole Miss be a lesson for Florida and Oklahoma: If you must lose, don’t lose to the weaker teams on your schedule. Score some wins against Top 25 opponents, let your strength of schedule work for you, and don’t lose to Vanderbilt or Kentucky.
Oklahoma won’t need to worry about that last point. Its schedule includes neither Kentucky, nor Vanderbilt, nor any SEC opponent that’s expected to finish among the bottom four of the conference standings.
Oklahoma’s schedule amounts to “the biggest challenge in all of college football,” Venables said on the SEC Network in December. That’s not hyperbole.
I could say the schedules staring down Florida and Oklahoma seem engineered to get a coach fired. Alternatively, they’re also designed to nudge a team that finishes 9-3 into the playoff.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.