NEW YORK — Southeastern Conference Commissioner Greg Sankey recommended UCF look “inward” to address strength of schedule issues that have held back the Knights in the College Football Playoff rankings.

Central Florida was ranked eighth in the final playoff rankings by the selection committee on Sunday after finishing a second consecutive regular season undefeated. The top four teams make the playoff . The Knights, who have won 25 straight games and consecutive American Athletic Conference championships, were never given any serious consideration for the playoff. They will instead play LSU in the Fiesta Bowl a year after they declared themselves national champions following a Peach Bowl win over Auburn.

For the past two seasons, the committee has cited the Knights’ schedule, which lags behind Power Five conference schools in degree of difficulty, as the reason they have been left out of the playoff conversation.

Sankey was asked about UCF and its place in the playoff picture during a radio interview at the Learfield Intercollegiate Athletics Forum on Thursday. The commissioner compared UCF’s situation to when the SEC placed only three teams in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in 2016.

“We weren’t living up to our expectations. Rather than point to the selection committee, other people ... we looked inward and said: `How do we adjust to the circumstances around us?”’ Sankey said. “I would observe that’s the challenge for everybody at the FBS level.”

Sankey later told reporters the SEC encouraged its schools to start scheduling more difficult nonconference basketball games as a way to build tournament-worthy resumes.

“When it was us and when it was men’s basketball, we knew we had two top-50 teams in 2015-16, which means you had virtually no top-50 wins in men’s basketball. How are you going to access those wins? You have to improve your nonconference schedule,” Sankey said.

UCF athletic director Danny White has been highly critical of the playoff selections and he objected to the comparison between college football’s postseason and scheduling process and college basketball. Nonconference football games are typically scheduled years in advance. In basketball, schedules are often completed months before the season. White also noted 3 percent of FBS teams make the playoff while 19 percent of Division I teams make the men’s NCAA Tournament field of 68.

“Basketball teams are rewarded for playing tough teams such as UCF through metrics like RPI or NET, while football teams avoid us because they’re concerned about the `eye test,”’ White told AP in a text message.

NCAA statistics measure strength of schedule by simple winning percentage of opponents. UCF ranked 71st out of 130 FBS teams after the regular season (.530 winning percentage by opponents).