Playoff committee adds Lloyd Carr and some much-needed mid-major experience

The College Football Playoff added four new veteran minds to its selection committee on Thursday. Lloyd Carr, Rob Mullens, Herb Deromedi, and Jeff Bower were appointed to the 13-member group that decides the most worthy candidates to make up the FBS’s final four. They’ll replace Mike Gould, Tom Osborne and Mike Tranghese, who depart the CFP after fulfilling their three-year terms as charter members of the committee, as well as Pat Haden, who resigned from his position in October.

The committee added two new members from uncharted CFP territory. Bower and Deromedi both come from mid-major FBS programs. Prior to 2016, every member of the selection committee with a background in coaching or as an athletic director (Gould was employed by Air Force, a Mountain West university, but as superintendent) had experience in a Power Five conference.

Carr is the group’s headliner. He coached Michigan for 13 seasons and won a share of the 1997 national championship in Ann Arbor. He retired as a coach in 2007 and was inducted in the College Football Hall of Fame in 2011.

The longtime Wolverine will be joined by another Power Five conference veteran, Oregon director of athletics Rob Mullens. Mullens has made Eugene his home since 2010, but has also held administrative roles at Miami, Maryland, and Kentucky.

Their big-league experience is balanced by the addition of two longtime coaches from the FBS’s less heralded conferences. Former Southern Mississippi head coach Jeff Bower will bring his 29 years of Golden Eagle experience to the committee. He’ll be joined by Herb Deromedi, who retired as the winningest coach in MAC history after captaining Central Michigan from 1978 to 1993.

Here’s what that group will look like in 2016.