Right on schedule

— -- The Big 12, Big Ten and Pac-12 will play nine conference games.

The ACC and SEC will play eight.

The ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC will stage conference championship games.

The Big 12 won't.

The ACC, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC will continue to play Football Championship Subdivision opponents.

The Big Ten won't.

LSU's future nonconference opponents will include Arizona State, Syracuse, UCLA and Wisconsin, plus possible showdowns with Oklahoma and Penn State.

Baylor's will include Lamar, Northwestern State, Rice and, ahem, the University of the Incarnate Word.

As major college football moves to a four-team playoff this coming season, in which strength of schedule and nonconference opponents are supposed to be more important factors than ever, battle lines have been drawn. Pac-12 coaches have criticized the SEC for playing only eight conference games, and SEC coaches reacted with a predictable response: Our eight conference games are a lot tougher than your nine.

In an unbalanced sport, where the only thing that seems to be equal is Auburn's and Alabama's utter dislike for each other, there appears to be no easy solution to college football's scheduling dilemma.

Making matters even more problematic, no one is exactly sure what criteria the 13-member selection committee will use to choose the four best teams for the playoff.

Which criteria are going to be weighed more heavily than others? Will an undefeated Big 12 champion with a softer nonconference schedule be ranked ahead of a one-loss team from the Big Ten or SEC, which might have lost in its conference championship game but played a much more difficult schedule?

The charge for athletic directors and coaches is to find the right scheduling formula to ensure their teams will be in the best possible position to be chosen for the playoff. It's a tricky balance between trying to finish a season undefeated and testing a team enough in the eyes of the selection committee.

"It's who you play," Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick said. "It's what you do. It's how strong a conference is in any particular year. It's what you do in those other games. I have no idea how the committee will ultimately measure it. But they've been pretty clear that there is no one way or one approach."

After SEC athletic directors voted last month to continue playing an eight-game conference schedule, Stanford coach David Shaw criticized the move, saying it wasn't fair that Pac-12 schools have to play a nine-game league schedule.

"I've been saying this for three years now: I think if we're going to go into a playoff and feed into one playoff system, we all need to play by the same rules," Shaw said. "Play your conference. Don't back down from playing your own conference. It's one thing to back down from playing somebody else, but don't back down from playing your own conference."

Along with the Pac-12, the Big 12 already plays a nine-game schedule. The Big Ten is moving to a nine-game league schedule in 2016, but the ACC voted last week to stay at eight games, along with the SEC.