College Football Playoffs Committee Probably Won’t Feature Famous Coaches

BCS executive director Bill Hancock went on the Dan Patrick Show to explain a few things -- most importantly, he cleared up just a little who’s going to be on the college football playoff selection committee. He’s envisioning one more like the committees the NCAA uses to pick its own playoff teams, which means no celebrity coaches or media people, just school and conference suits.

It’s been a lot of fun watching television and newspaper types define the ideal selection committee member’s credentials. Analysts who used to be coaches want former coaches. Former players want former players. Those with great senses of humor have probably lobbied for a really funny selection committee. The only takeaway here: if you’re lobbying to be on it, you will not be on it.

Here’s Hancock with Patrick:

What is your official title now with the new playoff format coming into college football?

“My title is executive director of the BCS for two more years until the BCS goes away and then I guess it will be executive director of son of the BCS. Whatever it will be called. What happens to me is probably the least important part of this. We are also excited about where this is headed and ready to get working on it.”

What are we going to call this four-team championship playoff that will begin in 2014?

“I think something like college football championship. Something like that. I don’t think you go out and create a cute name. I mean if a cute name gets applied then that’s fine.”

Are you in favor of the four-team championship playoff?

“Yeah I am. [Dan Patrick: What happened? You had to change?] The BCS did great things for college football. It’s undeniable. It made it more of a national game and you’ve heard me say that all those years, but things change. People’s perspectives change. Times change. We’ve had the BCS and the coalition and the alliance, we will have had it for 22 years. Of course people change over 22 years. We’re just ready to get going on the new deal.”

So is the championship game going to the best presenting city?

“It’ll be like the [college basketball] Final Four. It’ll move around every year.”

Who’s deciding the Final Four? That’s my biggest concern with all of this. Agendas? Who’s doing it? What is going to be taken into account here?

“This committee will be I think modeled in the large part after the NCAA sports committees. They do that pretty well. Of course everyone of those committees is subject to contention to controversy every year to soccer to tennis to basketball. They are all the same. I expected this to be made up primarily of current administrators like the NCAA committees. I expect the number to be somewhere between 10 and 20, maybe toward the middle of that number. Every conference to have a representative. Then maybe some at-large representatives to fill in and then how will they or what criteria they use? This is pretty broad, but it makes sense. Win-loss record. Who did you play? Where did you play them? How did you do? What’s your schedule strength? What about head-to-head? What about common opponents? Injuries? Yeah we lost to ‘State University’ but our quarterback was hurt that day. We won the rest of our games and he’s back. All kind of common sense things that folks use to evaluate team is what this committee will use.”