That sound you’re hearing in conjunction with College Football Playoff talk is the most recent “tweak” of the system.

The CFP announced on Wednesday that the selection committee will be using enhanced metrics in its evaluation of schedule strength when determining the weekly rankings that will begin on Nov. 4 this season.

Already, changes had been made to the seeding process for the 12-team field that remains in place for this season, and at this point, the foreseeable future.

For the seeding of this season’s College Football Playoff 12-team field, the four highest-ranked teams will receive the top four seeds and receive a first-round bye regardless of conference affiliation.

In the previous format, the top four-finishing conference champions were awarded the top four seeds, even if other teams that didn’t win a conference title were ranked ahead of them in the CFP standings.

The enhanced schedule strength metric is aimed at improving the CFP Selection Committee’s ability to appropriately apply it when considering teams in the weekly rankings.

“We feel these changes will help construct a postseason bracket that recognizes the best performances and teams on the field during the regular season,” CFP executive director Rich Clark said in a statement.

About last year

Clark intimated last year that schedule strength would carry more weight in the committee’s considerations when ranking teams.

“That is a very important metric, it’s not the only metric, (but) it’s one that cross-cuts across conferences and team schedules,” Clark said last October in the days leading up to the release of the first set of 2024 CFP rankings.

“It gives us a look so we can compare teams more accurately based on their strength of schedule. It helps us to look at teams in a more fair manner.”

Schedule strength, however, did not seem to be as big of a factor for last year’s CFP Selection Committee as teams’ ability to avoid losses, which SEC commissioner Greg Sankey noted at his league’s spring meetings in May.

Sankey, when reviewing last season’s 12-team field, made a reference to teams that played weaker schedules – Indiana and SMU were two such teams -- making the College Football Playoff field at the expense of 3-loss SEC teams Alabama and Ole Miss.

“You have a team that played four games against teams with 6-6 records last year that got in and another team didn’t play really anybody at the top of the conference and was selected in,” Sankey said.

“It’s clear that not losing becomes, in many ways, more important than beating the University of Georgia, which two of our teams were left out did, nobody (else) had that kind of quality win.”

Warde Manuel, the University of Michigan athletic director and last year’s CFP Selection Committee Chairman, said scheduled strength was a “considerable aspect” in the rankings, but suggested teams should not be punished by weaker schedules because “all they can do is play who is in front of them.”

Quality of SEC depth

Sankey addressed that notion at the SEC Spring Meetings, pointing out that his league’s quality of depth made for a more rigorous schedule that needed to be taken into consideration when adding wins and losses into the discussion.

“If you play the top-ranked team and 130th-ranked team, those two games average out to 65 1/2,” Sankey said. “If you play 65 and 66 (ranked teams), they average out to 65 1/2.

“But for maybe two teams a year, we don’t have 65 and 66 (ranked teams), and everyone else has a group of 60 and below. That has to be considered by us making schedules and the CFP itself.”

Per Sankey’s point, the SEC had only one team ranked 65th or worse (Mississippi State No. 81) last season, per the Congrove Computer Rankings, while other “power” FBS conferences had multiple teams ranked that low:

Big Ten

72. UCLA

97. Maryland

136. Purdue

ACC

65. Virginia Tech

77. California

78. Virginia

79. Stanford

80. Florida State

82. North Carolina

106. Wake Forest

Big 12

68. Arizona

69. Houston

85. Kansas

88. West Virginia

102. Oklahoma State

110. Central Florida

Sankey has acknowledged the quality of depth in the SEC, and how the CFP Selection Committee evaluates quality wins versus number of losses, has led to the league’s apprehension to expand its conference schedule from eight to nine games.

Potential schedule effect

The enhanced schedule strength metric could provide an incentive for SEC coaches who opposed the league expanding from eight to nine conference games to reconsider.

The SEC has yet to announce its schedule format for the 2026 season, but Sankey indicated in the spring a decision would likely be coming this fall.

The possibility of expanding the College Football Playoff field from 12 to 16 teams as early as the 2026 has been on hold with the SEC and Big Ten at odds over different formats.

The SEC voiced support of a 16-team model that would feature four conference champions, the highest ranked Group of 6 champion, and 11 at-large bids — the so-called “5-11” model.

Big Ten representatives have suggested they would not accept that model unless the SEC and ACC were to expand their league schedules to nine games — which the 18-member Big Ten plays.

The current College Football Playoff model features a 12-team field made up of the five highest-ranked conference champions receiving automatic bids and the next seven-highest ranked teams selected as at-large bids.

More recently, there have been reports of Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti and Sankey discussing a more widely expanded College Football Playoff field format — 24 teams or more — with SEC athletic directors meeting in Birmingham, Ala., earlier this week to discuss that and other relevant college football issues.

Kirby Smart favors expanded field

Georgia coach Kirby Smart said on Tuesday he would support such a model “if done the right way.”

Smart said he thinks expanded playoffs is “what fanbases want,” and provided perspective on how that might serve the issue of declining interest in non-CFP bowl games.

“People are not excited about mid-tier bowl games,” Smart said. “I think those bowl games are great experiences, I played in them, (and) I’ve coached in them …. that’s an opportunity.

“But the more teams you give an opportunity to decide things on the field, like you do, whether it’s college basketball, high school football, old (Division) 1AA football ….. you’re going to get things decided on the grass. So yeah, I’d be for that.”

Clark, speaking in Atlanta on Monday, indicated the CFP is not in a hurry to make any decisions.

“I would rather stay at this than rush to a decision that’s not good,” Clark said, per The Athletic. “So, if the decision is that we stay at the 12-team playoff until we know more, until we watch that another year, until we can discuss the other options on the table a little bit more, it’s worth sticking to the 12 team until we can come to really a solid, sound decision for the future.”

Part of the evaluation will likely include observations on the effectiveness and usage of the enhanced schedule strength metric, which might also influence league scheduling decisions.