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COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF MEDIA CONFERENCEDecember 6, 2015Jeff LongGrapevine, Texas JEFF LONG: Hello, everyone. How are you today? Before I take some questions I'll have some opening statements. Thank you for joining us for the final ranking of the 2015 college football season. The committee met shortly -- until shortly after midnight last night and then resumed again at 8:00 a.m. this morning. We now have a full body of work for all the teams, and here are the results: The top ranked team is Clemson; second-ranked team is Alabama; the third-ranked team is Michigan State; and the fourth-ranked team is Oklahoma. The semifinals will be December 31st. Clemson will play Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl at 4:00 p.m. eastern time and Alabama will play Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl at 8:00 p.m. eastern time. The winners will meet in the College Football Playoff National Championship game on Monday evening, January 11th, in Glendale, Arizona. The committee evaluated both Clemson and Alabama, and in the end Clemson was the clear-cut No. 1 for the committee. We had a lengthy discussion about Michigan State and Oklahoma. The committee saw those two teams as very close, as you would expect. They are both conference champions and now both 4-0 against top-25 teams. Ultimately Michigan State's two wins against top-ten teams made the difference and edged them in front of Oklahoma. Once we finished the ranking of the top four we continued our work through ranking the top 25, which will determine who will play in the other New Year's Six bowl games. While many people focus only on the top four, the committee pays close attention to the entire 25. Here is who's in in the New Year's Six games: In the Fiesta Bowl the committee matched the two highest-ranked teams remaining, No. 7 Ohio State and No. 8 Notre Dame. In the Peach, the committee paired No. 9 Florida State and No. 18 Houston, the highest-ranked champion of the Group of Five conferences. In the Rose Bowl, Iowa will play Stanford. In the Sugar Bowl matches No. 12 Mississippi versus No. 16 Oklahoma State. The second year of the college football selection committee is now complete. As chairman but also as a member of the committee, I want you to know how thoroughly enjoyable it was to serve on this committee and to work so passionately with the other members of the committee to rank these teams. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of study. It's a lot of detailed conversation, but I'm grateful to each and every one of the committee members for their hard work. Membership on the committee rotates, and this year will be the final year for Tom Osborne, Mike Gould and Mike Tranghese. We will certainly miss them, but the new members will be named early the next year, and we will look forward to welcoming them to the process. I want to also thank the CFP staff. They have been incredible in their support of myself, the 11 other committee members, and of Bill Hancock, our executive director, and certainly also want to thank the folks here at the Gaylord. Incredible support behind the scenes they've given us, so with that, I'm happy to take your questions. Q. When y'all are deliberating on these final teams in the top four, do you take any consideration on where that means they'll be playing? In other words, if Oklahoma had been ranked third they would have been playing in the Cotton Bowl, much closer venue than going to Florida? JEFF LONG: Yeah, absolutely not. We instruct -- as chair I instruct the committee members prior to that portion of the meeting, we're to rank the top four teams, the best four teams in ranked order, and we do not have any discussion about those pairings and where they would end up playing at that point in time. We first get those top four teams, one, two, three and four, finished before we do anything else. Q. Along the same lines, when you're comparing Michigan State and Oklahoma and the body of work, did the 13th datapoint, the fact that Michigan State did have a chance to improve that résumé in a title game, did that come up during the discussions? JEFF LONG: I would say that, again, like last year, it was a fact -- it was really a function of what Michigan State did in their 13th game. They beat last week's No. 4 team in the nation, and that was significant. No question that had an impact on the committee. I think that win over that highly-ranked team added to the rest of their body of work caused Michigan State to be ranked ahead of Oklahoma. Q. Along those lines, again, with the 13th datapoint, should the Big 12 be concerned at all that it's playing one less game? JEFF LONG: You know, that's for the Big 12 to decide. Again, we've looked at it. People have said different things each year. Last year it was a disadvantage. Some might say it was an advantage. Oklahoma didn't have to play, so they didn't have that risk-reward. Again, we leave that to the conference to decide who their champions are and how they determine their champion. Q. You mentioned on TV that it was a little tougher five through ten, and I realize this is sort of a speculative thing, but if y'all had been picking an eight-team playoff, how difficult would that have been down at the bottom? JEFF LONG: Again, we don't even think about an eight-team playoff. We're charged with picking the top four teams and then ranking through 25, so that never comes into the discussion, so I wouldn't know how the committee would view that. Q. You said on television also that you thought this was a little more difficult this year. Could you kind of elaborate on why you think it was? JEFF LONG: Yeah, you know what, I should elaborate on that. I answered that in terms of how I felt personally as an individual committee member. I'm not sure after thinking about it whether all the committee members would feel the same way. I just felt it was a little easier this year for me discerning between teams than it was last year in some respects, and I'm talking specifically about the top four here, not through the whole 25. Certainly we could make a case for sections of the top 25 being more difficult this year than last year, but that was a comment by me based on just my own individual feeling about the rankings this year. Q. I remember on Tuesday you had talked about how there was a whole lot of discussion between Clemson and Alabama for the No. 1. What was the discussion like over the weekend on Clemson versus Alabama? Was there still an awful lot of discussion on that point? JEFF LONG: Actually very different. You know, after the games played this weekend, for us in the committee room, Clemson was a clear-cut No. 1. Again, I think they had three wins over top-10 teams. I think maybe 8, 9 and 10 if I recall, if I take a quick peek. Yes, that's correct. So I think that difference, three top-10 wins. Alabama had three top-25 wins, but I think it was trumped by Clemson's three top-10 wins, and that really had an impact on us. Again, that's the kind of impact when you have the full body of work to see how teams have performed, and we could clearly make a distinction between Clemson being No. 1 and Alabama No. 2. Q. Jeff, in terms of the talk about Iowa and where they fell after they lost, what was the committee's reaction to the game? I know you spoke a little bit about it on TV, but just in terms of the next highest ranked Big Ten team, how that debate was? JEFF LONG: Yeah, the discussion really was -- we felt like Iowa had proved more almost in a loss than they had in the previous body of work. It certainly added to the piece. They played that game so close. They were inches away from a victory, so I do think that this very close loss kind of validated the entire body of work for Iowa, and we saw them as a very good team. I think it would be fair to say there were questions as we went through the season about Iowa, I think, and this is a case where they validated themselves through a very, very close loss. Q. Stanford, a two-loss team, finishes a spot ahead of Ohio State, a one-loss team. Obviously Stanford has the Conference Championship on its résumé. Is that the differentiating factor there or is there something else at play? JEFF LONG: You know, Stanford being a conference champion certainly has significance. Again, you look at their full body of work, they've got two top-25 wins, one top-10 win against No. 8 Notre Dame, and Ohio State has a win against No. 14, Michigan. Again, I think all of those things added together. The body of work resulted in Stanford being slightly ahead of Ohio State. Again, we're talking about very close teams here and very difficult discussions about which one is better. Q. You said on TV that there were people in the room that thought Oklahoma could be the No. 1 team. Could you elaborate on that when you look at their body of work? JEFF LONG: Yeah, we discussed it. We thought -- as we discussed about how they're playing right now, how their quarterback is playing now, being solid on both sides of the ball, not only solid, being strong on both sides of the ball gave some committee members a feeling that they could beat anybody in the country right now. But then again, when you look at their full body of work, you look at those wins and their loss against Texas, all of those things factored in. But there are certainly members of the committee that feel like they could be the No. 1 team in the country. Q. When you were talking about the difference between Clemson and Alabama, how much of a factor is it that Clemson was undefeated? If Alabama had had three top-10 wins, would that have been a deciding factor? JEFF LONG: Great point. Great question. Yes, certainly being undefeated going through that entire schedule, 13 games, and not stumbling, yes, that was significant in ultimately them being No. 1. Q. You talked about how beating top-10 teams made a difference for Michigan State over Oklahoma. Just over the past few weeks how has the committee weighed Alabama just the fact that all the metrics say they played a strong schedule, but at the end of the day in your final rankings the highest-ranked team they beat was 18th? JEFF LONG: Well, we certainly weighed that along with their other wins against No. 20 LSU, No. 23 Tennessee. They also had an opening-season victory against Wisconsin out of the Big Ten, a 9-3 team. So we look at that -- again, I'm explaining looking at the body of work. You can look down Alabama's body of work and it's an impressive group of teams that they've beaten, and then the same with Michigan State. They're very close. They've beaten a lot of good teams. They've only lost one game each. I apologize, I didn't quite understand that question very well, but hopefully you can get some kind of an answer out of that. Q. One of the takeaways from the first year of the playoffs was that a strong non-conference schedule mattered to the committee or seemed to matter to the committee. It seemed like you almost built upon that this year. Could you talk about how the committee viewed the non-conference schedule and the importance of playing strong opponents outside of conference? JEFF LONG: Yeah, I think teams that are getting credit -- you know what, you can look at the AAC, the American Athletic Conference, first. Those teams played up. They played Power Five teams. They won some of them. And I think that's a direct result of you seeing three of their teams in our top 25, and that could be played out with the Power Five teams, as well. You need to play non-conference games that test your team against out-of-conference opponents, and I do think that's demonstrated throughout our ranking, and I think while we're not trying to send messages, I think you can look at our rankings and get messages. I think conferences and ADs are looking at the rankings and determining that. Q. How do you guys evaluate Houston? How did you evaluate exactly who to match them up against when it came to the New Year's Six? JEFF LONG: Yeah, Houston is a very impressive team, but again, when you look at their overall ranking I believe at 18, I think that strength of schedule is what resulted in them, even though they only have one loss at 12-1, being back there at 18. As far as the selection of them for the Peach Bowl, is that the question? I guess I would maybe turn to you, Bill, on how we've placed some of those teams. BILL HANCOCK: Yes, the committee has several criteria that they use when assigning teams to bowl games. One of those is not sending a certain team or group of teams to a particular bowl either in subsequent years, back to back years, or too often over a period of time. We know that next year the Group of Five team champion will be coming to Dallas, will get to come to Dallas, and so this year with the Group of Five having gone to Phoenix last year, Atlanta seemed to be the best place for Houston. Also it's closer for Houston than Phoenix is, so that's how that came about. Q. How much more difficult do you think it is for teams to overcome losses late in the season as opposed to earlier in the season in the committee's eyes? JEFF LONG: Well, the committee, again, as we use often, the full body of work, the full résumé, we look at teams, whether they lost early or lost late, and we put that into what we look at and evaluate. Certainly some committee members may look at late losses or late wins, impressive wins more strongly than others, but as a group we discuss them in terms of a win in September and a win in November are equal, especially if they're against quality teams and quality opponents. Q. You spoke about Oklahoma a little bit and their body of work and what impressed the committee but I was wondering if you could expound upon that and touch upon what knocked against them aside from that Texas loss? JEFF LONG: Yeah, I think that obviously the Texas loss is a game that has held them back a little bit. It was a loss to a team that has a sub-.500 record, but certainly Texas has come back and shown some strength with their win against Baylor this past weekend. But Oklahoma at 11-1, they have a very strong offense and a very strong defense. When we look at them statistically, they're very highly ranked offensively and defensively. So that was impressive to the committee. You know, their win at Tennessee was impressive. That's a road win early in the season, and again, that had value to the committee. At some point some people thought that that wasn't an important win, but at the full body of work, at the end of the season, that's a very impressive win at Tennessee in front of over 100,000 people. You know, Oklahoma certainly is a strong team, and they have victories, as you know, four teams in the top 25, and then three other wins against teams with better than .500 records. Q. Going back to something like Tennessee where you see that team eventually come back into the rankings, how do you weigh what that team was like at the time compared with, well, Oregon, for example? Oregon is playing much better, and you look at Michigan State's win against Oregon looks better as the season progresses versus exactly what it looked like at that time. JEFF LONG: Well, an Oregon team is very different, whether they have their starting quarterback or not, and we saw that. Very impressive wins when they had their starting quarterback and did not play well when they didn't. So there's a great case where injury really affected that Oregon team. So with their starting quarterback back where they railed off a run of I think six straight wins at the end of the season, so we do evaluate the injuries. We do look at those teams, at how they evolve through the season, but the Tennessee example is an outstanding team even though it looks like a period of time they weren't playing well, when you see that whole body of work, that's an 8-4 team that was very good. A Tennessee team that their only losses were against really top-25 teams except their loss to Arkansas in Knoxville. Q. How does it change -- how does Oregon's evolution change your evaluation of Michigan State's résumé? JEFF LONG: Well, Michigan State won that game, if I'm remembering, with their starting quarterback. Yeah, with Oregon's starting quarterback. So that's an impressive win. If somebody has beaten Oregon without their starting quarterback, you know what, the committee can look at that. We can discern. A computer can't. We can say, hey, that was a really good Oregon team they beat, or you know what, that was an Oregon team without their quarterback. That kind of discussion definitely goes on in the room. So a win over an Oregon team with or without the quarterback has a significant impact in our rankings of teams, in our evaluations of teams. Q. Just want to get your take, during the ESPN selection show Paul Finebaum tossed out the theory that games on the final weekend, because the committee is all together, you're watching it all as a group, that those games might have more of an impact on the committee sitting there as a group, just human nature, what you've seen last. Do you buy into that at all? JEFF LONG: That's not unreasonable for somebody to make that statement, but again, in the committee room, we're not only looking at that one game. We start with that proverbial clean sheet of paper and we start that process from the beginning and go through it painstakingly. You know what, if we were just a bunch of guys sitting around a room and say we're going to throw our top 25 in, yeah, that last game probably got more impact on us, but because we painstakingly go back to the beginning and work our way through the entire schedule, I think that's less of an impact on us. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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