MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — On the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball committee, Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne is a self-described “strength of schedule guy.” He wants to see who teams play, where teams play them and how teams do. It’s the first lens he uses when evaluating a team for a potential postseason bid.
Byrne admits not everyone uses that same lens. And to him, that’s healthy.
But as discussions at the SEC Spring Meetings roll on about potentially expanding the SEC football conference schedule from eight to nine games and about the expansion of the College Football Playoff with, potentially, automatic qualifiers for the Big Ten and the SEC, that importance of strength of schedule question looms large. It’s a question Byrne is passionate about.
“Ultimately, it’s up to you and the play on the field, and you got to recognize that,” Byrne said May 27 on the College Football Playoff. “But I also, I do believe that when you looked at the bullet points — it wasn’t numbers, it was bullet points for the CFP — strength of schedule was the first bullet point listed. And trying to get some clear understanding of how is that weighed in the room is important.
For Alabama football, access to the CFP is at the top of Byrne’s list of what’s most important concerning the future of college football, having a clear understanding of what gets a team into the postseason, and what could keep a team out, much like what he called the “concerning” conversation last season about bubble teams, like the Crimson Tide in 2024, balancing between two and three regular-season losses.
Byrne’s status as a “strength of schedule guy” is evident in the current state of Alabama football’s future non-conference schedules.
Starting in 2025, Alabama has a 10-season stretch where its non-conference schedule includes two matchups against Power 4…
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Publish date : 2025-05-27 21:30:00
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