The SEC's new nine-game conference schedule promises more marquee matchups for fans, television viewers and season ticket holders. But LSU coach Lane Kiffin believes the expanded schedule could come with an unintended consequence: fewer SEC teams reaching the College Football Playoff.
Speaking Wednesday to the Baton Rouge Rotary Club, Kiffin said he would have preferred the conference wait to adopt a nine-game schedule until the College Football Playoff selection committee placed greater emphasis on strength of schedule.
Kiffin argued that SEC teams face the nation's toughest weekly competition, yet the committee continues to reward teams with better records despite weaker schedules.
He even offered a tongue-in-cheek alternative for selecting the playoff field.
"When it comes down to, 'Is that team better than that team?' ask Las Vegas what the spread would be on a neutral site," Kiffin said, drawing laughter from the audience. "They're going to do it a lot better than a room of conference commissioners and former players saying which team is better."
Kiffin said the transfer portal has created more parity across the SEC, making every conference game more competitive. Adding a ninth league game, he said, only increases the likelihood of teams finishing with multiple losses.
He worries that a 9-3 SEC team with several quality wins could be left out of the 12-team playoff in favor of an 11-1 team that faced a much easier schedule.
"We've got to get to the point where an 11-1 team that played one hard team and beat 11 teams it was supposed to beat isn't automatically viewed as better than a 9-3 team that played really hard teams in really hard places, beat some of them and lost three," Kiffin said.
According to ESPN's Football Power Index, LSU enters the season with the nation's 11th-toughest schedule, and every SEC team ranks among the top 20.
The Tigers open preseason practice Wednesday, and Kiffin said the demanding schedule means every position will be earned.
"Nobody just gets anything," Kiffin said. "Whether they're returning players, whether they're five-star players, whether they make this much money, none of that has anything to do with how much they're going to play. That's going to be earned on the field, through competition, every day in practice."
