Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby yesterday indicated that he expects the conference's new representative on the College Football Playoff selection committee "to be a sitting Big 12 athletic director," according to Kate Hairopoulos of the DALLAS MORNING NEWS. Bowlsby needs to nominate a replacement for outgoing West Virginia AD Oliver Luck, who will be forced off the committee after "moving on to a new post at the NCAA" early next year. Baylor coach Art Briles “has been outspoken about wanting more Texas/Southwest representation on the committee,” and Baylor defensive coordinator Phil Bennett has “floated the name” of former Texas A&M coach R.C. Slocum (DALLAS MORNING NEWS, 12/30). In Austin, Kirk Bohls wrote the CFP “should consider putting on the panel TCU’s Chris Del Conte or Baylor’s Ian McCaw as an olive branch for excluding those teams from this year’s playoff.” Meanwhile, CFP Selection Committee Chair Jeff Long, when asked of any changes to the committee, said that “most outsiders have mentioned shortening the number of times the panel releases its rankings.” He also said that he “expects Archie Manning to return to the committee in 2015 after stepping down for health reasons” (AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, 12/29).
LEARNING CURVE: Clemson AD Dan Radakovich was asked what he learned as a member of the CFP committee, to which he replied, “We’re all tasked with by the middle of January, putting together a little paragraph or two on what we thought might help the committee in future years, and we’ll pull all that together.” He added, “We’re going to have a conference call as a group, in January, then they’ll take those ideas, the ones we agree on, that make sense, and they’ll move that to the management group, and that’s the collegiate commissioners and the athletic director at Notre Dame. They’ll talk about those, see if they’re feasible” (NEWSOK.com, 12/27).
