The College Football Playoff field is set, with No. 1 Alabama facing No. 4 Washington in the Peach Bowl semifinal and No. 2 Clemson facing No. 3 Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.
How the 2016 College Football Playoff committee’s members avoid conflicts of interest
Here’s the list of teams that couldn’t be discussed by certain members.
Before that became official, the Playoff’s selection committee had to actually pick the teams. And while the committee’s got 12 members, not all of them got to be involved in every part of its last meeting, which happened Sunday morning.
The committee tries to cut out conflicts of interest as much as possible, and a few members have had horses in the Playoff race. So there’s a recusal policy that directly affected two members this year:
If a committee member or an immediate family member, e.g., spouse, sibling or child, (a) is compensated by a school, (b) provides professional services for a school, or (c) is on the coaching staff or administrative staff at a school or is a football student-athlete at a school, that member will be recused. Such compensation shall include not only direct employment, but also current paid consulting arrangements, deferred compensation (e.g., contract payments continuing after employment has ended) or other benefits.
This year, the committee member in the recusal spotlight is Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich.
His Tigers ought to have secured a Playoff spot by beating Virginia Tech in Saturday’s ACC Championship Game. But Radakovich still couldn’t have anything to do with Clemson’s formal placement. That means something like this, while a bad look on the surface, really shouldn’t be taken as a big deal:
Wisconsin athletic director Barry Alvarez is on the committee, too. His Badgers’ loss in the Big Ten title game freed up Alvarez to participate to some degree in Playoff discussions. But there was still a limit to his involvement.
The rest of the policy, with some bolding from me:
The committee will have the option to add other recusals if special circumstances arise.
A recused member shall not participate in any votes involving the team from which the individual is recused.
A recused member is permitted to answer only factual questions about the institution from which the member is recused, but shall not be present during any deliberations regarding that team’s selection or seeding.
Recused members shall not participate in discussions regarding the placement of the recused team into a bowl game.
Wisconsin is bound for the Cotton Bowl, part of the New Year’s Six games that are also the dominion of the Playoff committee. Three-loss UW wasn’t a Playoff contender anymore, so Alvarez should’ve be fine talking about the top four. But after that, he had to back off while Wisconsin was put into place.
Here’s the full recusal list for 2016, for what it’s worth:
Arkansas – Jeff Long
Central Michigan – Herb Deromedi
Clemson – Dan Radakovich
Duke – Tyrone Willingham
Oregon – Rob Mullens
Southern Mississippi – Jeff Bower
Stanford – Condoleezza Rice, Tyrone Willingham
Texas Tech – Kirby Hocutt
Wisconsin – Barry Alvarez
Needless to say, no one else’s affiliation is a huge concern in this year’s final discussion.
The recusal policy is an important one. You could make a case that it doesn’t go far enough, because five of the committee’s current members are actively employed by FBS schools, and they can still put on for their teams’ conferences.
But college sports are inherently a little bit incestuous, and as long as members aren’t deciding their own teams’ fates, the sport’s powers that be are OK with things working this way.
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