Kalen DeBoer on strength of schedule after College Football Playoff snub: 'It definitely wasn't rewarded'

Following Alabama‘s exclusion from the College Football Playoff, conversations immediately began about the merits of strength of schedule.

Alabama’s compared favorably to most of the playoff field, but the Tide were left out with three losses. Immediately, fans and analysts began to question whether this year’s selections would induce some change going forward.

One way that change could manifest? Creating easier schedules. Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer weighed in on that topic on The Next Round.

“As far as like the future, you know that’s kind of something that I’ll let (athletics director) Greg (Byrne) lead the charge on,” DeBoer said. “He has an understanding and kind of we’ll figure that out moving forward. But that’s not really, I mean I want to play competitive games. We want to play in the best games.”

Alabama’s non-conference schedule didn’t prove problematic when it came to the College Football Playoff this year, of course. All three of the team’s losses came in conference play. That’s something athletics directors won’t have a lot of control over.

The non-conference slate, though, is something that can be tweaked easily enough.

And if there’s little upside to scheduling tough games, you can probably expect schools to stop doing so. That’s the conundrum this year’s College Football Playoff selections have caused.

DeBoer didn’t feel like Alabama’s slate was properly valued.

“And understand how it didn’t feel like that… definitely wasn’t rewarded it felt like with our schedule and the wins we had against teams that were ranked, or now ranked,, or even ranked at the time,” DeBoer explained. “Because I think there’s even like an LSU at the time was ranked and isn’t anymore. But just we’ll have to, I’ll let Greg and administratively kind of lead the charge and better understand what needs to be done for the future, if anything at all.”

For his part, though, College Football Playoff aside, DeBoer is a fan of competitive scheduling.

“I know we’ve got some, when you consider higher profile games against programs that traditionally have been very successful, we want to be a part of that,” he said. “We want that to happen. That’s the exciting thing about college football, is being in as many big games as possible. We don’t want to back down on that, we want to be a part of that. That hopefully will be rewarded down the road.”