“I like to quote Douglas MacArthur sometimes who said: ‘On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other fields on other days will bear the fruits of victory,” former Lt. Gen. Richard M. Clark said Wednesday morning at Lucas Oil Stadium.
“What he’s saying is you learn things on the field, on the court, on the track, on the ice. Whatever sport it is, you learn things about life. You learn things about your character and who you’re going to be and how you’re going to perform in other situations that you learn playing the sport that you played. I learned things in football that I will never, ever be able to forget, and I’m grateful that they’re part of who I am.”
Clark, who was a linebacker at the Air Force Academy and spent the last four years of a four-decade military career as the Superintendent of the Air Force before retiring June 1, is replacing long-time director Bill Hancock, who was well-known for his ability to spin anything CFP-related into a positive and filibuster when necessary.
If his time on stage Wednesday was any indication, Clark possesses a similar rhetorical gift, but he did give some indication about what fans can expect from the newest iteration of major college football’s postseason:
1. Clark is excited to see the 12-team playoff in action for the first time.
With five conference champions getting automatic bids, including the winner of highest-rated non-Power 4 conference, more teams will be in the playoff, and more conferences are guaranteed to be represented.
“I think that allows every conference to have that opportunity to put a team into the playoff, and that’s something that we absolutely needed,” Clark said.
2. He is a fan of having first-round games on campus.
The top four teams will get byes into the quarterfinals, which will be held at traditional bowl sites on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, but teams seeded 5-8 will host games in the opening round the third weekend of December.
“That’s going to allow our fans to not have to travel for at least that one game, but what it’s really going to do is bring some electricity to the playoff because those campus games are going to be absolutely incredible,” Clark said.
3. Clark bypassed a question about the playoff format changing again soon.
Some reports have indicated some of the power leagues could be interesting in expanding the playoff further and/or guaranteeing more bids for themselves, but so far such changes have not been implemented.
“There’s a lot of talk about what the future might hold and where we might go into the next iterations of the playoff, but I’ll be honest with you, our goal right now is to make this year spectacular,” Clark said. “This is the format that we have. This is the format that we’re going to execute, and we need to make it as amazing as it can possibly be.”
But he did not rule out anything, either.
“Then, of course, we all work for our commissioners, and we will continue to work with them not only to assess how this season goes after we’re all done executing it, but what kind of changes might need to occur in the future because we’re not going to rest on our laurels.”
4. The role of the CFP selection committee won’t change.
While the committee has guidelines for making rankings, there is also a lot of autonomy, and Clark made that sound like a feature rather than a bug.
“What we’re trying not to do is tie the hands of the committee members and make it so prescriptive on how they use the different data that they have and incorporate that into their ranking, but what we do is emphasize that things like strength of schedule are very important, that it is among the top things that they have to take into consideration.”
5. He referred to coming up with the rankings as both a science and an art.
“I sat in on three of the selection committee meetings last year, and I’ll say that that team operates with great sophistication,” Clark said. “There’s a lot of discussion there, and I think that they take into account the things that are most important, especially as we go into some of the changes now. They’re going to recognize that these changes are happening and that strength of schedule is going to matter.
“So there’s science in this, and there’s art to this. We have the eye test. We have committee members that are very smart and very in depth in their knowledge of college football. So I think that that is always going to be a top criteria, but I think they’re taking it into the right level of importance when they’re making their decisions.”
About the Author
