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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF MEDIA CONFERENCE

November 24, 2015

Jeff Long

Grapevine, Texas

GINA LEHE: Good evening and welcome to tonight's ranking teleconference. Once again I'm joined by College Football Playoff Selection Committee Chair Jeff Long and Executive Director of the College Football Playoff, Bill Hancock. We'll begin tonight with opening remarks from Jeff and turn it over to the operator for questions.

JEFF LONG: Good evening, and thank you for joining us again. This was a week of close calls, small differences, and hard decisions. Here are the rankings.

Top-ranked team is Clemson; second-ranked team is Alabama; third-ranked team is Oklahoma; and the fourth-ranked team is Iowa.

Oklahoma and Michigan State moved up after significant wins over quality opponents on Saturday. We discussed why the Sooners with one loss should rank higher than the undefeated Iowa. The answer: An increasingly impressive body of work that includes wins the past two weeks over ranked opponents Baylor and TCU. We similarly had a lengthy discussion of Michigan State and Iowa. The committee viewed the two teams as equal in so many areas. Iowa's undefeated record made the difference. With these movements up by Oklahoma, Iowa and Michigan State, Notre Dame is ranked sixth and Baylor is seventh. While there has been plenty of stability at the rankings 1 and 2, the race for the playoff and the New Year's Six bowls is intense. As we get closer to the end of the season, there are big games ahead.

One internal note: Mike Tranghese was under the weather this week so he did not attend the meeting or vote. Our votes consisted of 11 members. I'm happy to take questions.

Q. I was wondering if you could -- I know that the committee and the protocol is not weighted in terms of conference championships, head-to-head results, et cetera, but I was wondering if you could just kind of take us through last year when you guys were sitting there watching those conference championship games just how much that did matter to the end result?
JEFF LONG: It mattered in the end result. Conference champions, as you mentioned, is one of the criteria for us to consider when we have two teams that are basically equal, so they definitely matter. I don't know that I can put a value on how much they matter.

Q. Well, when you're looking at an independent or a team that might not win as a conference champion. I know it has to be, quote, unequivocally better, and that doesn't necessarily come down to a certain amount of votes or anything in the room, but how do you define that? What makes a team unequivocally or clearly one of the best teams in the country if it doesn't have a championship game?
JEFF LONG: Well, you said it. It's clearly different. They're clearly ahead or they're clearly better than the team they're up against.

Q. When you guys talk about Oklahoma and you talk about, like you said, the two top-25 wins this past week, propelling their body of work, how is the Texas loss viewed at this point? For them to be No. 3, does the committee now feel that that loss to a 4-6 Texas team was an aberration?
JEFF LONG: I think it's more a function of how Oklahoma has performed since that loss. They have performed at a high level since then, so they've overcome that loss with their play on the field and the success they've had and the wins they've accumulated, with now six wins over teams with .500 or better records. So it's more a function of how they've played and performed that has moved them past that loss to Texas.

Q. I wondered, as you look at the one-loss teams, is there such a thing as a good loss? For example, do you weight a loss to Clemson better than other teams' losses, for example?
JEFF LONG: Well, first of all, a loss is a loss, so we certainly understand that the team lost. But we certainly look deeper and see how a team lost, how they played in that game, the closeness of that loss is something that's discussed. But more importantly, how those teams played in those losses. We don't speak in terms of bad loss/good loss. We certainly evaluate those losses. All losses are not the same.

Q. As you look at Notre Dame, they've had so many people shuffling in and out of their lineup. They have more of that this week against Stanford. Because of that, are they a little bit difficult to kind of define as a team, who they are at this point in the season?
JEFF LONG: Well, I think all teams develop their rÃ©sumÃ©s through the course of the season. We certainly have much more information on their body of work at this late point in the season. But many teams have players that are injured and come back, and we look at all those things. It's certainly part of our discussion when we evaluate Notre Dame.

Q. The last few weeks you've had Clemson, Alabama one, two. I'm wondering how solidified Clemson is at that top spot and how much consideration there was given to potentially Alabama being the No. 1 ranked team?
JEFF LONG: I think this week, again, we discuss all these teams every week, and we certainly looked in detail at Clemson and Alabama, but I would say that Clemson was solidly in that No. 1 spot, and there was no real indication that Alabama was going to challenge them for that No. 1 spot in this week's rankings.

Q. Oklahoma hangs on to a one-point victory, real close game, last-second play. They played the whole second half without their starting quarterback. They played with a backup QB. How do you guys weigh that into the formula of where Oklahoma landed?
JEFF LONG: Yeah, I think when the quarterback went out, and I think later the running back went out, as well, they were solidly in control of that game in the committee's view. And yes, they held on to win that game against a ranked opponent, but certainly we evaluate that game based on the quarterback being out in the second half, and we believe that had an impact.

Q. People in the Big 12 are a little bit nervous when one of their teams is ranked third. Last year after TCU came in ranked third, they won by 52 points and dropped to sixth. What would keep Oklahoma from suffering the same fate this year?
JEFF LONG: Well, last year is no indication of how things are happening this year, and I can't project, nor would I try to project what's going to happen in the next two weeks of football games. I really can't answer that other than, you know what, they need to play well, they need to win their games, and they need to add that final piece to their body of work against Oklahoma State.

Q. Y'all have been very stable at the top, certainly with Clemson and Alabama. Now, there has been some more movement here. One of the things you had said before the season started was that it's a new world every week, but it does seem like the teams are maybe not jumping quite as much this year. Was that a purposeful thing or did y'all feel like from week to week the poll should kind of measure up from when it was the week before?
JEFF LONG: Well, first of all, I wouldn't characterize it as a whole new world. As we say, we use that clean sheet of paper, and we start evaluating those teams from scratch, and we work our way through their body of work, recognizing how they performed.

You know, this is not the traditional polls. The committee ranks teams based on votes, and after a great deal of discussion of the teams, so we're nothing like the polls in our view. We're a ranking system, and we vote for our teams. Whether teams move up or down, it is not based on anything in our minds saying we're going to move teams more or less this year. It's based on those teams' performance and nothing else.

Q. Just to follow up on that what you said before the question about the difference between Iowa and Michigan State, I believe Michigan State had six wins over .500 teams and three over the top 25. Why is that not enough for them to be above Iowa or for that matter Oklahoma?
JEFF LONG: Well, again, in our view, Oklahoma is better than Iowa, so in our estimation and in our votes, we feel that way. And then again, we thought Iowa and Michigan State were extremely close. We compared them very closely, and as you pointed out, they do have some differences there.

But I think in the end, they were so close that the fact that Iowa is undefeated and they have not had a misstep along the way at this point gave them the edge against Michigan State.

Q. Alabama is a team whose rÃ©sumÃ© has changed considerably based on the rankings that you guys put out tonight, their only top 25 win is No. 21, Mississippi State. They'll obviously have to continue to play well. Has there been any revisiting of Alabama based on some of the teams that they beat?
JEFF LONG: We revisit Alabama each and every week when we discuss and analyze them. I don't think it's because of anything that they haven't done. I mean, their rÃ©sumÃ©, their strength of schedule, depending on how you look at it, is in the top 10 for sure. That's a strong schedule, and like Oklahoma, they've performed very well since that loss against Ole Miss.

Q. Last year when you guys released the final rankings, I remember you talked about one of the things that you were impressed about with Ohio State was they went out with their third-string quarterback and really beat Wisconsin pretty handily. You know, Baylor went out with its third-string quarterback against Oklahoma State the other day and won on the road. How much did that play into Baylor's jump from 10 to 7?
JEFF LONG: You kind of lost me there when you jumped from TCU to Baylor. Can you ask that again so I'm clear on what you're asking?

Q. I didn't actually mention TCU. Ohio State, you talked about them last year --
JEFF LONG: Pardon me, you did say TCU. That's why -- ask it again, please.

Q. Okay, sure. Last year you guys were really impressed with Ohio State in the Big Ten Championship Game going out with its third-string quarterback and beating Wisconsin. Baylor was kind of in a situation the other day where its second-string quarterback got hurt, they went out with their third-string quarterback in the second half and won on the road against Oklahoma State. How much did that impact Baylor's jump?
JEFF LONG: I'm sorry, I do understand your question now. I'm sorry, I may have gotten it confused.

You know, it certainly has an impact because Baylor did continue to play well in that game with the third-team quarterback. And again, like last year, it speaks to the strength of that overall team that they could continue to perform at a high level with a third-string quarterback.

Yeah, I think it certainly had an impact.

Q. Jeff, some of these teams have recently lost games, and of course as you just mentioned, this is not the same thing as the AP or the USA Today or anybody else's poll, but in those polls there's always been a feeling that late in the season is a bad time to lose a game, and yet Baylor and Ohio State are still within striking distance. Do y'all feel like a late loss is not as damaging as it might be in other rankings?
JEFF LONG: No, we don't look at it that way. A loss is a loss, and it's certainly considering the full body of work of a team. However, the committee does recognize that teams change throughout the season. They certainly have a more defined body of work at the end of the season, so understandably I think the committee feels they know a team better near the end of the season than they do at the beginning of a season.

GINA LEHE: Thank you, Jeff, and thank you for everyone's participation this evening. That concludes tonight's teleconference.

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