Playoff architects won't be allowed to pick teams

[May 30, 2013]  IRVING, Texas (AP) -- The conference commissioners who put together the College Football Playoff will not be allowed to serve on the committee that selects the teams that will play in it.

The commissioners are still working on the structure of the selection committee for the new postseason system that starts in 2014. But they have eliminated themselves from consideration.

Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby, who once served on the basketball selection committee, said Wednesday he thought commissioners recusing themselves was the right way to go.

"I really believe there are some people with a high level of expertise that would be helpful to the process, a high level of experience that would be helpful to the process," Bowlsby said at Big 12 meetings in the Dallas area. "But we felt like it was just going to be too disruptive and too subject to suspicion and therefore decided that we wouldn't be in the room."

BCS Executive Director Bill Hancock told reporters at the Southeastern Conference spring meetings in Destin, Fla., that the commissioners are not eliminating the possibility that active athletic directors could serve on the committee, but the focus has been on using former administrators, coaches, and even media members to make up the panel.

Hancock says the commissioners would like the committee to have geographic balance.

"Conferences have been invited to submit names," he said. "Probably about 20."

Bowlsby says he submitted a list of 15 names that included current and former athletic directors, former league commissioners, former coaches and former media members.

"Bill's instructions to us were don't worry about checking with them in advance," said Bowlsby, who believes there will be overlap among the lists from the 10 conferences asked to submit names. "Let's try to identify who the best people are and then we'll centrally do that."

The committee will not have representatives for each conference, and nominees were not supposed to be based on league affiliation, Bowlsby said.

"I think it's reasonable to think that our list included more people with Big 12 backgrounds because we know more people with Big 12 backgrounds, and it will probably be similar in other conferences," Bowlsby said.

The commissioners would like to have the panel, which will include 12-20 people, before the end of the upcoming season, and possibly have them go through a dry run.

"There's no timeframe," he said. "We're not in a hurry. There's no rush. I think probably by this bowl season we'll no. Maybe before then. But we're not in any hurry."

Bowlsby said statistical formulas will have to be established for the committee, and those metrics will be applied to the past decade or so to see how they would have worked out compared to the BCS.

Hancock said the tentative plan will be for the committee to meet before the 2014 season, then about four times during the season, starting in October. Bowlsby said members will need a strong work ethic.

"There's going to be a lot of film study. There's going to be a lot of travel," Bowlsby said. "The last year I was on the men's basketball committee, I think I was in the hotel 66 nights for the basketball committee. I think there's going to be a similar level of commitment that's going to be required from this."

[Associated Press; By SCHUYLER DIXON]

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