The Secret Formula of the College Football Playoff Committee

EPISODE 37: A look inside the most enigmatic cabal in American sports.

I’ve known John Urschel for a little while now, enough to know that there is nobody else like him.

John was a 6’3”, 300-pound offensive lineman at Penn State; and then with the Baltimore Ravens; and then, while in the NFL, he simultaneously (and secretively) began taking PhD classes in mathematics. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Which led, eventually, to his current job: full-time math professor at MIT. At age 32.

I don’t know what any of this means.

But the reason that I demanded John join me today, specifically, is not because of that incomprehensible career trajectory.

I wanted to talk to John, from his new office at MIT, because he just finished his three-year tenure on the College Football Playoff Selection Committee: the wildly controversial, 13-member group of Stonecutters that decides who sits atop the most unhinged sport in America.

Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State, used to be on this committee. So was Ronnie Lott, Hall of Fame defensive back. Not to mention a cavalcade of sitting athletic directors who help apportion the millions upon millions of dollars in TV rights fees, via ESPN, that the conferences they govern might earn.

And as The Committee gathers, again, this weekend — to adjudicate the most chaotic, highest-stakes conference-championship weekend in the decade-long history of the College Football Playoff — I wanted to know what, exactly, they’re up to, behind closed doors.

And how John would improve the sport he loves, if given the chance.

DKN/YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

ROLL TIDE,

Pablo