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The College Football Playoff has announced their selection committee today. They are:
- Jeff Long (chair)
- Barry Alvarez
- Lt. Gen. Mike Gould
- Pat Haden
- Tom Jernstedt
- Oliver Luck
- Archie Manning
- Tom Osborne
- Dan Radakovich
- Condoleezza Rice
- Mike Tranghese
- Steve Wieberg
- Tyrone Willingham
This is a fairly diverse group, even including the Pat Dye-maligned Condoleezza Rice. I'm glad to see Dye's 1960's thinking was relegated to it's proper place here in the second decade of the 21st century.
The committee includes six former athletics directors, two people not directly connected with athletics in any way, one reporter, one former NCAA conference commissioner, a former NCAA executive VP and a partridge in a pear tree (Tyrone Willingam). That's a bit of humor, I like Ty Willingham just fine. Here's how the CFP people describe the committee:
In aggregate, the selection committee members have roughly 230 years of experience in college football. The group includes 10 people who played college football, two former top-level university administrators, five current athletics directors, three members of the College Football Hall of Fame, three former college football head coaches, a former United States Secretary of State, a former member of Congress, and a retired three-star general. More on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee
In addition, the group includes a Rhodes Scholar, two Academic All-Americans, three Phi Beta Kappa graduates, and a retired journalist who won numerous awards as a reporter. Collectively the group has 26 degrees of higher learning, including eight master's degrees, two law degrees, and two doctoral degrees.
You can read the rest of the information about it at the release above, it goes on to describe generally how the committee will work, and intends to describe term limits for the committee, which makes sense to me.
Overall, this looks like the kind of group I could get behind. There is plenty of experience from all walks of life, there is good diversity of experience and, overall, a bunch of qualified, intelligent, well-meaning people who will no doubt go into this job trying to do their level best to be fair and honest.
I think they could have done far worse, like packing the thing with sports journalists. I think it's a little heavy on the AD side, but quite honestly, I think it's a good first stab.
Discuss.