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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 1, 2015Jeff LongGrapevine, Texas GINA LEHE: Good evening, everyone, and we will could tonight's College Football Playoff Selection Committee Chair Jeff Long and Executive Director of the College Football Playoff Bill Hancock. We will begin tonight with opening remarks from Jeff and then turn it over to the operator for questions. JEFF LONG: Good evening, everyone, and thank you for being here. This was another week of stability at the top of our rankings. Some people outside the committee speculated that this meeting would be simple and easy. Let me tell you, it was not. For example, I want to draw your attention to the discussion we had about Clemson and Alabama. The committee debated long and hard about the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams. Clemson is again ranked No. 1, but it was close and indeed very close. They both have impressive bodies of work. Clemson is 6-0 against teams with winning records including two wins against teams in this week's top 10. Alabama is 8-1 against teams with winning records. While that is an impressive résumé, Alabama has not played a team in the current top 10. Clemson's undefeated record was also clearly a factor. Here are the rankings: The top-ranked team is Clemson; second-ranked team remains Alabama; the third-ranked team is Oklahoma; and the fourth-ranked team is Iowa. The committee will gather for the final time this season beginning Friday afternoon, December 4th. Members of the committee will meet and watch the remaining games here at our hotel. We will announce the four teams on Sunday morning, December 6th at 11:30 a.m. Central Time. Pairings for the remaining New Year's Six Bowls along with the rest of the top 25 teams will be announced at 2:00 p.m. Central Time. I look forward to it and I'm happy to take your questions. Q. Oklahoma has already won its conference championship. Clemson and Alabama haven't yet. Has Oklahoma gotten credit yet for its conference title? In other words, if they're a conference champion before others, would that show up now? JEFF LONG: No, I don't think it would. I mean, we would apply that in the last week in the final rankings. Clearly we know that Oklahoma is the Big 12 champion. Q. And a question about seedings. The protocol says the committee will place the top two seeds at the most advantageous sites, including factoring home crowd advantage. If Oklahoma is still outside the top two, what's the thought process on how the committee might handle putting them in Dallas, which would be really close to their fans? JEFF LONG: Well, again, the No. 1 team will dictate where we go, but to be honest with you, I can't really answer because the committee has not discussed that yet. Certainly we will, but it would be driven by the No. 1 team. Q. You mentioned a couple times now that North Carolina, even though they're playing better, the early season non-conference results are still kind of holding them back. This week we play the No. 1 team in your rankings. How much can a performance in one game not necessarily erase but diminish what happened in the early part of the season? JEFF LONG: Again, it's hard to speculate on that until we see that game, know if they won, how they won the game, and then it comes into the room with 12 members of the committee, we discuss and debate. So I can't anticipate how the committee will respond to that. Q. Okay, then at this point, we talked last week about Oklahoma's loss to Texas and you mentioned that they've played so well since then that you feel like they're a better team. North Carolina has not had as many quality games since then for the committee to totally overlook at this point the South Carolina loss? JEFF LONG: Well, you're right, and the Oklahoma résumé is deep with four top-25 victories in our current rankings, and then three other wins over teams with winning records. You know what, that, we believe, has factored into that Texas loss. North Carolina, I'll just say we haven't seen the depth and breadth of their résumé that the South Carolina game certainly is still an important factor, just as Texas is with Oklahoma, but Oklahoma has done a great deal of work to overcome that loss. Q. Would the committee -- the number one priority is to get the top seed right; would the committee consider tweaking the bottom seeds if you feel like they are very close to make sure Oklahoma doesn't play in Dallas? I know that's looking ahead a lot, but if 3 and 4 are close, would you try to manipulate them in a way so that you don't end up with a 3 or 4 seed playing close to home? JEFF LONG: I can answer that very honestly: Absolutely not. We won't try to manipulate that. Our charge is clearly rank those top four teams, one, two, three and four, and we're going to do that by who we think are the best teams, and that will be how they end up one through four. Q. How difficult is it for a non-champion to crack the top four? JEFF LONG: I don't know how to answer that because I don't know any of the variables of that non-champion, what they've done, how they've played, who they've beaten, the depth of their résumé, and then I don't have anything to compare that to. I apologize, but I really can't give you any more of an answer than that. Q. How difficult is it for Ohio State to crack the top four? JEFF LONG: It depends on how the other teams play and what the results are above and below them, and again, it's just clear speculation, and I don't have the ability to do that for myself, let alone the entire committee. Q. Just wanted to, on the Oklahoma question, since their body of work is pretty well established outside of a few of their opponents still playing games this weekend, but the Sooners are done and wrapped up. You talked about the debate between No. 1 and 2 in the room. How solidly is Oklahoma in the field in the eyes of the committee right now, and given Oklahoma's finish, could something affect that for Oklahoma where it stands right now? JEFF LONG: First of all, yes, things could affect where Oklahoma stands, certainly. But let me answer it this way: We had great debate about Clemson and Alabama, and we had a number of revotes, and there were times in the meeting I actually thought Alabama was going to be voted ahead of Clemson, but they were not. And then on the other side of Oklahoma, we had great debate about Iowa and Michigan State, and again, similarly, I thought from the conversation in the room that a vote may have put Michigan State in front of Iowa. It did not, but I can tell you those discussions were long and hard and deep, thorough, and very, very close. Q. Where does that leave Oklahoma, though? Are they a solid three at this point as you see it? JEFF LONG: Yeah, it leaves them at No. 3. And, again, the fact that I think that most of the discussion and debate was above them and below them would indicate that their position at three was pretty solid with the committee. Q. Is it possible for Clemson to lose this week and stay in the top four? JEFF LONG: You know, certainly it is possible. But again, we can't speculate on where that would be, because again, we don't know how the other teams are playing, how the other championships will have turned out, but it's an easy answer for me to say it's possible, but I don't know all the other factors that would play into it. Q. Let me ask it this way: Would that conference champion be automatically ahead of a losing Stanford team in any metric? JEFF LONG: Yeah, I can't say that, either. It would all depend on all those different factors that we look at and discuss in that room. So I wish I could give you a clear answer; I can't. Q. Question regarding Ohio State: How big a hurdle is it not being in a championship game, and even more so, what's the committee's stamp on having more than one team from a conference in the semifinals? JEFF LONG: First of all, our protocol clearly says there can be more than one team from a conference in the Final Four, so that's definitely a possibility. And then secondly, last year there was discussion about having a -- not having a conference championship game hurting a team, and then this year there's discussion about it advantaging a team. You know what, we said it last year and the same is true this year: A conference championship game, not having or having it, can help or hurt you, depending on the circumstances of that particular season. This season is very different than last season. Again, it is up to the conferences to determine their champions, and certainly there are scenarios where it can help and hurt a conference. Q. Ohio State obviously had two big games at the end of the year, Michigan State you know what happened. How much was the committee impressed by what Ohio State did against Michigan? JEFF LONG: I think that was an impressive win. They dominated that game and it was a very impressive win to everyone who saw the game and watched it, and certainly added to Ohio State's résumé and is really the most impressive win they have on their résumé. Q. Are there still permutations in play coming up this Saturday that could remove Oklahoma from the top four, and would you characterize those permutations, those chances of Oklahoma being out of the top four, as solid chance, slim chance, almost no chance? How would you characterize that? JEFF LONG: I can't characterize that, I really can't. Again, I appreciate and understand your question and it's probably a natural one for media and fans, but it's speculative, and we just don't go down that road. Q. Would you say any chance? JEFF LONG: I can't say, period. Q. In evaluating Ohio State on the whole, could you just maybe go through how you evaluate a team that was 10-0 maybe not against a great schedule, had a loss, comes back with its best win, that whole Ohio State résumé, how much does the end of the year compare to what you saw through the first 10 games? JEFF LONG: You know, with any team, we look at that complete body of work. We certainly -- a win at the beginning of the season, end of the season over highly-ranked teams are equal to us. Games at the end of the season might be more fresh in our mind, but it's important to the committee that we make sure that we value wins at whatever point in the season they occur against quality opponents. I'm not sure if I got to the essence of your questions there, but as far as how we evaluate -- gosh, we spend 12 hours, 10 to 12 hours every Monday and Tuesday evaluating these teams, so there's many, many things we go into very deeply discussing and discerning and dividing and debating and disagreeing and agreeing upon. It's quite a process, and again, I can't express how fantastic this process is. Where somebody might spend 30 minutes looking at a particular team or ranking, we spend hours and hours and we have 12 people who have been dedicated to digging in deeper and getting to the best-ranked teams, those top-four teams, and then ranking through that 25. I've been very impressed, again, with the work of this committee this year. Q. And just in general, talking about any possibility of a non-conference champion being in the top four and having to establish that they clearly belong there, just put yourself -- you are a committee member; what would that look like to you just theoretically in your head? What would the type of résumé look like to be clearly in the top four if you're not a conference champ? JEFF LONG: You know, I really, again, apologize, but I can't really answer that because it depends on all the other teams I'm going up against and their résumés and how they've performed. There isn't just one. There is not just one résumé that would get a non-championship. There are too many to name or to describe to you. The variables are just far too many. Q. You've mentioned that North Carolina's two wins against FCS teams are one reason holding them back. Those teams, James Madison and The Citadel, they're ranked in the FCS top 25. They're rated by some analysts ahead of some lower-tiered FBS teams. Do you analyze the quality of a team's FCS opponents, and if so, how do y'all do that? JEFF LONG: Well, first of all, I will start at the beginning of your question. It isn't only the FCS victories. It's the combination of those with a South Carolina loss that is a team that ended up 3-9. Again, it's never just one thing. There's multiple things in there that have held North Carolina back, their overall strength of schedule is not strong, again, depending on the metrics we look at, they're very high in their strength of schedule, which is not a positive for them. I'm sorry, the second part of that question? Q. Do y'all analyze who the FCS opponents are or is it just FCS opponents as a whole or is it just really not a good quality team? JEFF LONG: Okay, I understand. Yes, the value of an FCS win, we look at those teams. We know their records, and we also look at teams that are in FBS and that maybe are performing at a low level. We look at that. It's not just, oh, they played an FCS or, oh, they beat an FCS or, oh, they lost to an FCS. We look at those FCS teams as well and know their relative strengths, as well. Q. Last week you said that Clemson was solidly in that No. 1 and there was no real indication that Alabama was going to challenge them last week. What changed over the weekend to now where Clemson and Alabama are very close? JEFF LONG: Yeah, I don't remember my response about Alabama and Clemson being Clemson clearly. Actually last week we had very similar debate, except this week it was even a little more heated and thorough and close. But the conversation on Alabama last week was similar. It was a strong discussion. Now, the voting ended up with Clemson clearly No. 1, but there was a lot of debate about Clemson-Alabama last week, as well. Q. What changed this weekend to make it even more of a heated conversation? JEFF LONG: Well, we had additional pieces to the résumé. We saw a Clemson team struggle against a South Carolina team, that same South Carolina team that beat North Carolina at the beginning of the year. South Carolina struggled with a 37-32 win there. That team is a 3-9 team. And then we saw Alabama play an Auburn team in a rivalry game and win that game, so those are two more pieces to those résumés that allowed us to look deeper into that No. 1 and No. 2 ranking. Q. Just following up on what you just mentioned earlier about North Carolina's strength of schedule metrics, I know this isn't necessarily the one you guys used, but in Sagarin, they're at No. 63, Ohio State very similar, No. 61. Is that kind of how it looks for the committee, and if so, has that come up in your discussions about Ohio State? JEFF LONG: Yeah, we don't use Sagarin, and so we do not know how they come up with their ranking, but North Carolina and Ohio State in the multiple number of strengths of record metrics we look at, they're not close. It's clearly in Ohio State's favor on the strength of schedule. GINA LEHE: Thank you, everyone, for your participation. That concludes tonight's teleconference. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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