Who can argue with Diego Pavia? He had Nashville turnt for Vanderbilt in 2024. Last week, Pavia went on the Bussin with the Boys’ podcast and planted the SEC flag on top of the Big Ten. First, he said that athletes who want to “play with the best” should choose the SEC over the Big Ten. He suggested that players receiving offers from B1G schools should “ignore those calls.” To Pavia, the difference is the grind. Pavia described the SEC as a “week after week” challenge where teams “are going to get beat on.” He went further by saying that in the Big Ten, you are just going against teams like “Purdue and Nebraska,” and “you only have to score seven points to beat Iowa.” These are words that bring smiles to SEC fans across the Southeast and make everyone else roll their eyes in disgust. We won’t focus on the latter; instead, let’s get to what Pavia is talking about. How do we determine which conference is the best? What metrics can we use to assess a team’s (conference’s) Strength of Record?
Strength of Record and the College Football Playoff
The College Football Playoff is expanding (again). Greg Sankey has discussed how the selection committee should utilize more effective metrics and data points to recruit teams. Last week, commissioners from the various conferences met at the Biltmore to discuss playoff expansion and the selection process. Some suggested bringing in mathematicians from Google to help the committee make a more informed opinion. Read that as not picking Indiana over Ole Miss or Alabama again.
The whole conversation got us thinking here at Last Word, why not give the selection committee the most critical data point: results on the field? This is tough. College football is a 12-game season. Contrast that with basketball, which plays 30+ games, and baseball, which can play as many as 60. So that makes the Quad wins and other metrics more difficult. Add to the challenge that an expanded playoff may make the regular season “meaningless.” So, let’s solve for both problems and settle it on the field.
Strength of Record Solution: Solve It On the Field
We all know (or those reading this know) that the SEC is the best conference in college football. Don’t let facts like the most recent national champions or national championship appearances skew the argument. We will use the SEC as our example to help settle this on the field once and for all.
Bring On The Pods
Let’s face it, 16 and 18 teams are too big. Luckily, the SEC has not gone beyond 16…yet. Divisions really don’t help. Think about how unbalanced it was for a while between the SEC (L)East and the SEC West. So, what’s a writer to do? Let’s go back to the proposed solution: use the results on the field. Brilliant! (Now, I want a Guinness.) We will use the previous season’s records to figure out how to set up our pods. Does this make sense geographically? No. Will some rivalries be missed? Yep. Does it make the regular season matter more? Absolutely.
Here is what the four pods would look like for the upcoming 2025 season:
| Pod 1 | Pod 2 | Pod 3 | Pod 4 |
| 1 – Texas | 2 – Georgia | 3 – Tennessee | 4 – Missouri |
| 8 – South Carolina | 7 – LSU | 6 – Alabama | 5 – Ole Miss |
| 9 – Texas A&M | 10 – Florida | 11 – Arkansas | 12 – Vanderbilt |
| 16 – Mississippi State | 15 – Kentucky | 14 – Auburn | 13 – Oklahoma |
How would the regular season conference games work?
Great question. We would have seven regular-season conference games. Each team would play the three other teams in their pod and then cross over against another pod. The highest-rated pod would then cross over against the lowest-seeded pod from the previous year. For 2025, Pod 1 would cross over against Pod 4, and Pod 2 would play against Pod 3. This is what Georgia’s 2025 regular season conference schedule would look like.
- vs. LSU: Georgia and LSU don’t play enough. We’ll see this one between the hedges or at Tiger Stadium.
- vs. Florida: Cocktail party continued, maybe now we can get out of Jacksonville, Atlanta, and Tampa for good.
- vs. Kentucky: Yay?
- vs. Tennessee: Josh Pate argued that Neyland Stadium is the toughest place to play in the country. Georgia is 4-0 in the last four matchups, winning by an average of 40.8 – 10.3.
- vs. Alabama: Bulldog fans are a glutton for punishment. Who doesn’t love stressing out playing the Tide?
- vs. Arkansas: Maybe Kirby Smart can finally convince Sam Pittman to come back to Athens as the offensive line coach.
- vs. Auburn: The Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry. Tell me again how this pod thing isn’t a great idea…
How do we determine a conference champion?
The College Football Playoff is expanding from 12 to 16 teams, once the Big Ten agrees it’s a better idea. We will gladly take the 5+11 model, as we argued last week. So, we still need to determine a champion, but more importantly, we have to enhance our conference’s resumes and Strength of Record by figuring out how to crown a winner. But, how do you do so with only seven conference games?
Seven games? We wanted nine, and you went to seven? We can hear the Big Ten now, clutching their pearls. They didn’t let us finish — but rest assured, there is an eighth conference game. It serves as a play-in round for the conference championship. To determine who will head to Atlanta to play in the SEC Championship, we will begin our mini-conference tournament. We will use the team’s conference record to determine the rankings.
- 1 vs. 4
- 2 vs. 3
To keep teams 5–16 engaged and competitive during Week 8, and to continue to boost the teams’ resumes. We will also have a secondary set of games. Consider these at-large spots for the coveted 11 spots.
- 5 vs. 8
- 6 vs. 7
The rest of the conference would play it out to help determine the rankings for next year’s pods.
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9 vs. 10
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11 vs. 12
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13 vs. 14
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15 vs. 16
Who says no? Oh, wait, we still have four games left to fill. We have a solution for that, too, and it doesn’t involve scheduling games in 2069.
Non-Conference Opponents
When the commissioners vote and approve the 5+11 model, it will continue to validate that conference championships matter. It will also be helpful to provide data points for the following year. The top four conferences from the previous year will face each other in the regular season. Not only does this offer better matchups, but it also helps us to determine Strength of Record. We will have three conferences playing against each other. This will help establish not only a narrative (qualitative data) but also results (quantitative data) to inform the committee’s decision.
Here were the three highest-rated conferences based on the College Football Playoff Committee’s final regular season rankings last season: the Big Ten (Oregon) was first, the SEC (Georgia) was next, the Mountain West (Boise State) was third, and the ACC (SMU) was fourth. We can hear our brothers from the Big 12…What about us? Sorry folks. As we said, our solution was that the results on the field matter.
Non-Conference Strength of Record Challenge
Here’s how the SEC schedules would align against the three other conferences. Matchups are based on the previous season’s results, with each SEC team facing a team from the opposing conference with a similar ranking. Because the Mountain West has fewer teams, we made some adjustments to the lower end of the SEC’s schedule for that matchup.
| SEC | Big Ten | Mountain West | ACC |
| Texas | Oregon | Boise State | SMU |
| Georgia | Indiana | UNLV | Clemson |
| Tennessee | Penn State | Colorado State | Miami (FL) |
| Missouri | Ohio State | Fresno State | Syracuse |
| Ole Miss | Illinois | SJSU | Louisville |
| Alabma | Iowa | New Mexico | Georgia Tech |
| LSU | Michigan | Hawaii | Duke |
| South Carolina | Minnesota | Utah State | Virginia Tech |
| Texas A&M | USC | Air Force | Boston College |
| Flordia | Rutgers | San Diego State | NC State |
| Arkansas | Washington | Wyoming | Pittsburgh |
| Vanderbilt | Nebraska | Nevada | Virginia |
| Oklahoma | Michigan State | Maryland | UNC |
| Auburn | UCLA | Purdue | Cal |
| Kentucky | Wisconsin | Flordia State | Wake Forest |
| Mississippi State | Northwestern | Stanford |
What about the 12th game?
Is the 12th game up to the schools? Want to play a cupcake in-state FCS school? Be our guest. Put our frosting to the test. Want to continue the ACC-SEC rivalry. Have at it. We would appreciate hearing your thoughts on this proposal. It gives us the best of both worlds. A fantastic and meaningful regular season, and the data points to provide the committee with the knowledge to select the best teams to give us a robust playoff.
Main Image: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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