Road to CFP Needs a Skill-Based Ranking System — Not a Volume-Based Leaderboard

I enjoy Road to the CFP, but the ranking and team-tier systems need a major rethink if this is supposed to be a competitive online mode.

Right now, the leaderboard rewards volume far more than actual performance. Many of the players near the top have played hundreds of games, while players with much better winning percentages and championship results can be ranked thousands of spots below them simply because they haven't played nearly as much.

Team tiers also need to matter much more

There is currently very little incentive to use lower-tier programs.

If I beat someone using a powerhouse with a significantly weaker school, the difference in season-ranking points may only be one or two points compared with winning with an elite team. That doesn't come close to reflecting the difference in difficulty.

Why should I take West Virginia into a game against Oregon, Alabama, Ohio State, etc. if an upset is barely worth more than winning the same game with another powerhouse?

A proper competitive system should weight every result based on several factors:

Opponent skill/rating

Your team tier

Opponent's team tier

Home vs. away

Win/loss

Championship and playoff performance

Beating an elite player with a weaker team on the road should be worth substantially more than beating an average player with one of the best teams in the game. Likewise, losing a close game with a Tier 5 school to an elite player using a Tier 1 team should not hurt your rating the same way as losing an evenly matched game.

Separate skill rating from progression

If EA wants to reward people for playing a lot, that's completely fine — but make that a separate season/progression score.

The actual competitive leaderboard should use something closer to an Elo/MMR system where rating changes primarily reflect:

Who did you play? What teams were being used? Where was the game played? And did you win?

Volume should help establish confidence in someone's rating, not become the primary route to climbing the leaderboard.

We also need more transparency

While I disagree, I understand the thought to not display an opponent's rank before kickoff if the concern is people quitting or dodging highly ranked players...but it takes some steam out of the game and if match making is good, this shouldn't be an issue, and quitting should be negatively enforced anyway. 

But there is absolutely no reason not to show someone's rank  after the game.

After a game, we should be able to see:

Opponent's overall rank

Record

Championships

Team most commonly used

Recent results

How many ranking points we gained/lost and why

We should also be able to view recent opponents and look at their profiles. Right now you can play an incredible game against someone, finish it, and have virtually no way to know how good that opponent actually was unless they're Top 100 or already on your friends list.

Road to CFP should distinguish between:

Skill: How difficult are you to beat?

and

Activity: How much have you played?

Right now those two things seem far too intertwined.

Give us a ranking system that rewards performance, difficulty, and accomplishment — not primarily games played.