Selection Sunday 2024 was probably the most anticipated non-game broadcast on ESPN since Lebron James’ “The Decision” over a decade ago. Only difference is that the people down in Miami didn’t quite walk out of this one as winners! You’d have been forgiven to assume that the final verdict of the CFP committee will dissipate some of the talk around the process and its many fallacies. After all, it’s set in stone now. You’d have been wrong. The decree has only gone on to add fuel to the already fiery discourse.

Joel Klatt is often the voice of reason in the CFB national media. One reason for his disposition as a revered figure is that he’s a straight shooter. He brings forward ample and tangible reasons in his usually thorough analysis. In the backwash of Conference Championship weekend and the ensuing rankings, Klatt raised his concerns. These concerns mainly revolved around the different traversal teams followed to get to said championships.

“As a committee, you need to pause and take a look at this and be like ‘Okay, hold on. Do we really want to just value [the conference championship game] and the participation in this game over everything?’ I would argue you can’t, because of the imbalance in schedules. It’s vast.”, said Joel Klatt on his namesake YouTube show. He believes the final pecking order paid too much heed to these games. Klatt hinted that the teams that ultimately took to the field to fight for the throne had not been battle-tested prior. In fact, they may not have been a top 2 team in their respective conference at all.

Joel Klatt elaborated on the paths of three teams in particular. He said, “SMU played only 2 of the 6 ACC teams with a winning record in conference play, that’s wild…So they didn’t play any of the top opponents. They didn’t play Clemson, they didn’t play Miami. Quite honestly, neither of those teams played the others either. So it was an incredibly flawed ACC schedule from the get go.” He then took his gripes over to the perceived two biggest conferences in the Power 4.

“Texas [Longhorns] wasn’t all that much different. They got, for SEC standards, a cupcake SEC schedule,” claimed Klatt. “They only played 2 of the other 8 SEC teams with a winning record in conference play. Georgia and [Texas] A&M…So Texas was a huge beneficiary of an incredibly favorable schedule in the SEC. They still don’t have a win over a ranked opponent.”

Klatt then pointed at a team which did indeed get to Indy rather shockingly and not through their own doing. “You look up Penn State. They only played Ohio State out of the 4 playoff teams in the Big 10. Meanwhile, Ohio State had to play all the other playoff teams…the path to the championship game was vastly different”, he reiterated.

So, what’s the solution to this inequality?

The answer to a flawed CFP format lies at very bottom rung of the ladder

The in-conference scheduling turned out to be imbalanced, which helped certain teams and affected others. The schedules are conjured well in advance. So there is no real way to know they’ll end up being unfairly tipped in somebody’s favour. A team like Indiana, for instance, would’ve been viewed as being in the lower echelons of the B1G prior to this season. But things transpired very differently in actuality. Florida State, on the other hand, moved in the opposite direction.

There is no conspicuous, definitive solution. However, there is a way to negate the luck involved. Schools in the ACC currently play 8 conference games. If this number was increased to 9 or 10, it would mean more teams play the same schedule. So a lot of the weight that falls on things such as the strength of schedule, which teams can’t control, is inadvertently taken off.

The best teams will often rise to the top, no matter their opposition. The Texas Longhorns would likely still be an elite Natty contender if they played Georgia’s schedule. But in a world with a 12-team playoff, it is not just the elite teams that partake. The more similar the schedules, the more likely the conference standings are to denote reality. This sort of macro change will take its due time. Figures of Joel Klatt’s ilk speaking out can speed things up.