DESTIN, Fla. - No one envies the job that lies ahead for the College Football Playoff selection committee.
Long hours, endless second-guessing, inevitable criticism and even conspiracy theories likely await the group of 12 to 20 people who will pick the four teams for a playoff to crown national champion beginning in 2014.
Yet the challenge of choosing the best four teams in college football might prove less difficult than identifying the people to do it.
“I’m just telling you, the task when they are picking them will be tough, and when the committee gets together it will be a very tough task,” Florida Athletics Director Jeremy Foley said Wednesday at the SEC’s annual meetings. “But it’ll come out all good in the end, in my opinion.”
The end product will not include Foley, who is unwilling to serve on the committee.
But Foley, like other athletics directors, will have some input. He gave two candidates to SEC Commissioner Mike Slive this week at the request of playoff executive director Bill Hancock.
Today marks the deadline for conferences to submit candidates for the committee, beginning an arduous selection process Hancock plans to wrap up no later than the 2013 bowl season.
Hancock said Wednesday he expects more than 100 nominees, a list that could include current athletics directors but not current coaches, commissioners or media members. Former coaches, commissioners, media members and others with deep connections to the college game will be considered.
“You can slice it any way you want, but people of integrity who know the game are the people we are looking for,” Slive said.
Candidates must have the time to devote as well as objectivity and a high football IQ. Slive said he estimates he lost a year of his life during his five-year stint on the men’s basketball selection committee.
LSU Coach Les Miles suggested that members of the football committee be paid, unlike those in men’s basketball, and Slive agrees.
How the teams will be selected, not just who will select them, is another area of contention.
Slive said the men’s basketball selection committee picks teams by relying heavily on long-standing statistical formulas, something the football playoff committee will need to establish.
“From my experience on the basketball committee, there’s two components,” Slive said. “One is the eyeball test … then, at the same time, objective data.”
But unlike the ultra-secretive basketball committee, the football playoff committee will operate out in the open.
“I think they’re going to periodically come out with rankings during the season of the top 10 or top 20 teams,” said LSU Athletics Director Joe Alleva, who serves on the basketball committee. “It’s going to be a big process. They’re going to have to be very transparent.”
The committee ultimately will decide more than the four teams who get into the College Football Playoff semifinals. It also will pair the teams in the four New Year’s bowl games that are not hosting the national semifinals.
But those decisions are a long way off. More immediate is who will make them.
“I don’t know if they would want me on that committee,” said South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier, who is 68 and has been linked to college football most of his life. “I may have too many loyalties. That’s what you have to look at.
“Archie Manning would be a good one on there, probably … unless Ole Miss was in the Final Four.”
In other news from the meetings, basketball coaches got a lesson in scheduling analytics this week.
It could lead to more NCAA Tournament berths.
On the heels of what Slive called a “bad year” - defending national champion Kentucky missed the tournament while only Florida advanced past the first weekend - the league has hired former NCAA tournament guru Greg Shaheen as a scheduling consultant.
Shaheen gave detailed presentations to coaches and athletic directors this week. And SEC schools agreed to send their nonconference schedules to the league office for evaluation and possibly renovation.
“We’re going to make sure we’re playing the kind of schedules that will position us to put the number of teams in the (NCAA) tournament that we have traditionally over the years,” Slive said.
He compared the process to a stoplight, saying some schools will get the green light on their nonconference schedule, some will get a yellow light and some will get a red - meaning stop and try again.
Slive hopes to avoid a repeat of last season’s debacle. Powerhouse Kentucky was knocked out of the first round of the NIT while only three of the league’s 14 teams made the NCAA tournament.
Seven conferences, including the Atlantic 10 and the Mountain West, had more teams than involved in March Madness than the SEC.
SEC teams suffered a string of bad losses as well as bad victories.
When the season ended, six SEC teams - Texas A&M (105), Vanderbilt (111), Georgia (143), South Carolina (228), Mississippi State (230) and Auburn (250) - were ranked 100th or lower in the Ratings Percentage Index rankings. Arkansas was 99th.
The RPI is a scale used by the NCAA Selection Committee to rank Division I basketball teams by their performance in light of strength of schedule. Low RPI ranking numbers denote strong teams; and high numbers, weaker ones.
Shaheen handed every SEC coach a 20-page report that broke down the league’s nonconference schedules from last year, with details that included how every game - win or lose - affected conference power ratings.
“One of the things that was very, very eye-opening to all the coaches was just how much every school’s scheduling impacts the other team because you are going to play those teams,” Florida Coach Billy Donovan said. “I think just the whole education process, not only the RPI but the scheduling and how to go about scheduling and the importance of it, is really good.”
Three SEC schools already have submitted their 2013-2014 nonconference schedules, Shaheen said, and he already is considering tweaks to those.
“It’s not only who you play, it’s where you play them,” Shaheen said. “They need to be serious about this from the first game to the last. If they don’t go on the road and don’t play quality competition, it will be reflected at the end of the year.”
The conference is also negotiating with St. Louis, Tampa, Fla., and Atlanta to host future men’s basketball tournaments.
Slive said Thursday the league is in talks with those cities to fill vacancies in the rotation. The SEC wants to narrow its locations down to a primary spot. Nashville, Tenn., is hosting the event in 2015, 2016 and 2019.
St. Louis (2017), Tampa (2018) and Atlanta (2020) are expected to fill the holes.
The league is looking for a primary site after having success with permanent models in Atlanta (football) and Hoover, Ala. (baseball).
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.
Sports, Pages 19 on 05/31/2013