Mike Elko 'screaming for clarity' in College Football Playoff ranking process

After losing to rival Texas, everyone knew the Texas A&M Aggies were set to drop in the College Football Playoff rankings. In the end, it ended up dropping from No. 3 to No. 7 in the country. That still will be good to make the Playoff field, but it did catch the eye of head coach Mike Elko.

While speaking to the media on National Signing Day, Elko addressed that ranking and, more generally, the process of the selection committee. In particular, a need for clarity as it relates to the criteria that are used to rank teams.

“Yeah, I think we’ve alluded to this, right,” Mike Elko said. “As a football coach, put a ball down. Let’s go play. It doesn’t matter. We’ll play anyone, anywhere. It is what it is. We’re going to be in the Playoff and we’re gonna go compete for a national championship. I think from a CEO standpoint, I think we are all screaming for some clarity.”

The selection committee does change and this season, in particular, the chair of the committee changed after Mack Rhoades resigned. That, obviously, won’t help with consistency this season. Still, coming up with these rankings is always subjective.

“I’ve said this all the way through this season, of what exactly is the criteria that we’re utilizing to break ties. I don’t know that anybody has a real firm understanding of what that actually is. So, for us to have a higher strength of schedule and a higher strength of record than a lot of the teams that share the same record as us, I don’t understand. Now, at the end of the day, we’ll put a ball down and we’ll go play and it’ll be what it’ll be,” Elko said. “But it would be nice if there was a little bit of clarity in into the process of what exactly happened.”

Nationally, there has been some narrative that other teams have played tougher schedules than Texas A&M. Elko made it clear he disagrees. In particular, he disagrees based on the metrics that the College Football Playoff committee used.

“Then, the other thing that I’m just going to address with this because this needs to be said too. It’s amazing how many people want to say we’ve played a poor schedule when we have the 15th-ranked strength of schedule in the country and the third-ranked strength of record in the country. So, I understand that you can look at a picture on social media and draw a line and just make arbitrary conclusions,” Elko said.

“But I also think we have these formulas that create analytical evaluations of what our schedule actually was and how many teams could have actually managed our schedule at 11-1, and those numbers are very much in our favor. So, I know we can get on a mic and scream real loud that Texas A&M hasn’t played a strong schedule, but if you dive into our schedule in any capacity, every analytic says we have. So, rather than yelling real loud about what we’ve done, I think let’s look at the analytics and the numbers and use that to try to guide some more intelligent decision making.”

Despite those strong opinions on how the committee has been unclear, Mike Elko declined to answer where he thinks the Aggies should be ranked. Instead, he shared that he’d have the Aggies ready to go whenever and wherever that may be.

As it stands now, Texas A&M would be the No. 7 seed in the Playoff. That would mean hosting a first round game. Assuming nothing changes, that would also be a rematch against Notre Dame. Of course, things will likely change thanks to the conference championship games.