{"id":248230,"date":"2025-10-24T09:29:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/248230\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T09:29:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T09:29:10","slug":"lane-kiffin-uses-betting-odds-to-make-case-for-more-sec-teams-in-college-football-playoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/248230\/","title":{"rendered":"Lane Kiffin uses betting odds to make case for more SEC teams in College Football Playoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ahead of 2025\u2019s first College Football Playoff rankings reveal on Nov. 4, Ole Miss<\/a> head coach Lane Kiffin<\/a> has an interesting suggestion to help make the CFP selection committee\u2019s job easier. Rather than asking WWJD \u2014 What Would Jesus Do? \u2014 Kiffin suggested the Playoff\u2019s 12-member selection committee should instead turn to Sin City and ask \u201cWhat Would Vegas Do?\u201d<\/p>\n

Following an offseason that saw the College Football Playoff make changes to its selection criteria, including an renewed focus on a team\u2019s strength of schedule<\/a> to appease its SEC detractors, Kiffin is calling for the committee to look to Vegas betting odds when making a distinction between two teams with similar resumes. Kiffin made a similar point late last season when Ole Miss was among several three-loss SEC teams \u2014 including Alabama<\/a> and South Carolina<\/a> \u2014 that were left out of 2024 Playoff in favor of one-loss teams like Indiana and SMU despite seemingly stronger resumes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat would Vegas do? They\u2019re the best at what they do, by far. Way better than any committee, way better than anybody could. When you look at teams, and you\u2019re \u2026 comparing them, if it was a neutral game, what would Vegas make the spread? And that should tell you who the better team is,\u201d Kiffin said during Wednesday\u2019s SEC Coaches Teleconference. \u201cWhat would Vegas make the spread? And if you were to bet your own money, your kids\u2019 college funds committee, who would you bet on? On a money-line, without the points. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, that tells you a lot \u2013 who would Vegas make as a favorite when you\u2019re looking at the teams on a neutral site. That would be the best way to determine who the best teams are. And Vegas doesn\u2019t go \u2018Well, there\u2019s already so many teams from this conference, so this one probably shouldn\u2019t go.\u2019 There you go.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Kiffin says at the end, using Vegas betting odds would seemingly remove any particular conference bias some committee members might have in order to maintain a sense of balance among the Power Four leagues. Currently, Kiffin\u2019s eighth-ranked Rebels (6-1, 3-1 SEC) remain in the thick of the 2025 Playoff race despite coming off a 43-35 loss at No. 5 Georgia<\/a>. In fact, the SEC currently has five teams ranked in the AP Top 12 and 10 total teams in its Top 25 after Week 8. <\/p>\n

Suffice it to say, if the College Football Playoff committee were to add Vegas betting odds to its selection criteria, it would be a boon for the SEC at large.<\/p>\n

In August, the\u00a0CFP\u00a0formally announced it is changing the criteria its selection committee utilizes to assess a team\u2019s schedule strength and how teams perform against their respective schedules when evaluating its weekly rankings in the upcoming 2025 college football season.<\/p>\n

This change addresses concerns about the committee\u2019s devaluing of strength of schedule metrics raised by the Southeastern Conference after a trio of SEC teams \u2014\u00a0Alabama<\/a>,\u00a0Ole Miss<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0South Carolina<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 missed out on the original 12-team Playoff field despite all having more favorable strength of schedules metrics compared to Playoff teams such as\u00a0Indiana<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0SMU<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cChanges for the upcoming season include enhancements to the tools that the selection committee uses to assess schedule strength and how teams perform against their schedule. The current schedule strength metric has been adjusted to apply greater weight to games against strong opponents,\u201d the College Football Playoff release stated. \u201cAn additional metric, record strength, has been added to the selection committee\u2019s analysis to go beyond a team\u2019s schedule strength to assess how a team performed against that schedule. This metric rewards teams defeating high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty for losing to such a team. Conversely, these changes will provide minimal reward for defeating a lower quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to such a team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last season, Indiana (11-1) and SMU (11-2) were awarded the Playoff\u2019s 10th and 11th seeds, respectively \u2014 pushing out No. 11 Alabama (9-3) as well as fellow 9-win SEC teams Ole Miss and South Carolina \u2014 despite the 11-win Hoosiers and Mustangs having the nation\u2019s No. 35 and 41st strength of schedule, per ESPN\u2019s FPI rankings. By comparison, the Crimson Tide\u2019s SOS was ranked No. 20 nationally, with the Gamecocks right behind at 21st. The Rebels\u2019 final SOS was 37th \u2014 right between Indiana and SMU.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of 2025\u2019s first College Football Playoff rankings reveal on Nov. 4, Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-248230","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}