Clemson AD has strong thoughts on CFP expansion after serving on committee
Clemson Director of Athletics Dan Radakovich is as qualified as anyone to offer thoughts on the College Football Playoff.
Not only did Radakovich serve on the committee for the past four years, the Tigers also made the College Football Playoff each of the past three seasons.
Radakovich, who has been at Clemson since December of 2012, has strong thoughts on the possibility of the playoff expanding to eight teams or potentially more down the road.
“Not only do I from a committee member’s perspective, but from an athletic director that has seen the movement of all of those people to these various sites over a two-week period, and watching the student-athletes, I think four is plenty,” Radakovich said.
In 2015, Clemson’s team, staff and athletic personnel spent a week in Miami for the Orange Bowl before going home for a few days, then leaving to play the national championship in Arizona.
In 2016 the Tigers traveled to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl and then to Tampa, Fla. for the national title game.
This past season Clemson played in New Orleans in the Sugar Bowl. Had the Tigers won they would have had a quick turnaround before heading to Atlanta for several days.
If the College Football Playoff is expanded to eight teams or more, football programs and fans would have an added week of travel.
“The logistics going through all of this become very, very difficult if you go beyond (four),” Radakovich said.
As for serving on the playoff committee, Radakovich said that the process was time consuming but rewarding. He added that the committee was great to work on, whether it was having hundreds of metrics provided to help make decisions easier or being able to watch games in 45 minutes due to having commercials and down time removed from games.
“I’ve served on a number of NCAA committees over my years in athletics, and this was far and away the best committee that I’ve ever served on,” Radakovich said. “Not only from the way the College Football Playoff, Bill Hancock, Michael Kelly and their entire staff helped set the table for the committee members, but just the professionalism, people coming prepared, doing their job, making sure that if they had a particular stance on a team or a conference that they would have information to back it up.”
Radakovich was not allowed to get involved in the conversations when Clemson was being discussed, but he still contributed plenty during his four years on the committee.
“There were times where certainly Clemson was in the discussion, and over the last three years Clemson was in the discussion a lot. When that happened I would have to be out of the room. But that was only the top three,” Radakovich said. “I was there for the other 25, and certainly the first year when we weren’t at that level I was involved very, very heavily. It was usually about an extra 12 to 15 hours a week of work during that time period from the end of October until we made the decision that you would spend on this particular task.”
This story was originally published January 27, 2018 at 12:57 PM with the headline "Clemson AD has strong thoughts on CFP expansion after serving on committee."