During Wednesday’s SEC teleconference, Kirby Smart was once again asked if he had any idea what the College Football Selection Committee was looking for in terms of its criteria for ranking teams.

It’s a subject Smart has not been shy about discussing.

Although his Bulldogs are back in the playoff picture and projected to be part of the 12-team field, Smart said he’s still quite unclear about exactly what the 13-person group is actually looking for.

“I've repeatedly said I don't know what they're looking for. They can't define that, and it's not simple either,” Smart said. “It's not, I mean, anybody could be on that committee and say, well, this is what we're looking for. This is our criteria, and there's so much that it overlaps things, and everybody debates it, and I don't have time to really waste energy on it. So, I think it's more than your non-conference games and who you play.”

During a Zoom session with reporters, CFP Chair Warde Manuel mentioned “eye-test, head-to-head and strength of schedule” as being three of the factors.

Smart just isn’t sure they’re being evenly applied.

“It just seems unjust to me when you evaluate somebody's got a third-ranked defense or somebody's got a fifth-ranked defense,” Smart said. “Well, don't you think that that third or fifth-ranked defense is dictated by who they've played on offense and how many top offenses they've played? Because last time I checked, you know, our offense and our defense have played the top offenses and defenses across the country. Well, you're not going to be ranked as high if you play top ones than if you play lower-ranked ones, and that's what gets me is they talk about the eye test.”

Count LSU coach Brian Kelly as one SEC coach who feels the strength of schedule should be taken more into consideration.

Kelly’s Tigers won’t be going to the playoffs this year, but he agrees with Smart that teams who play a difficult schedule should not be penalized for doing so.

“I thought that this year was going to be an adjustment and that we were going to go through this process, we're going to look at it carefully and see how it played out and then the playoffs would be a big indicator of how this moves forward,” Kelly said. “I think it's going to be heavily decided on schedule. And I think that we're going to get that historical lesson this year.... But I think strength of schedule is going to play a major role ultimately in how this shapes itself moving forward.”

Smart hopes so.

His Bulldogs have the nation’s top strength of schedule, but thus far the committee appears to have placed more emphasis on the team’s losses to Alabama and Ole Miss, than the team’s impressive win at No. 3 Texas and against No. 17 Clemson.

“How do you play in the game? Well, how you play in the game is dictated, number one, by where you're playing, home or away, and number two, who you're playing. That's the two number one indicators of how you play. It's who you're playing,” Smart said. “Who you line up across from matters, but point differential, I don't know that I believe they actually look at just that. I don't know if that's actually the case. They're looking at the whole picture of how you play, and that's dictated by who you play.”