Dan Radakovich is/was at the ACC spring meetings this week at Amelia Island, and his membership on the CFP selection committee makes him a popular dude with the media.
Andrea Adelson of ESPN.com sat down with Radakovich and asked him for reflections on the selection process.
You and Michael Kelly had a chance to talk to the ACC football coaches about the selection process. Some wanted to know why unbeaten Florida State ended up No. 3 in the final rankings and whether league perception played a role. What do you feel you were able to present to them?
DR: Hopefully what I was able to present to them was there were 12 individuals who looked at that issue 12 different ways. What came from that was the collective votes and the rankings came the way they are. I wanted to let them know nobody walked into that room with preconceived notions about a conference or a team. They looked at the game, they looked at their analytics and that's how they came forward with it. The ACC, when you look at it from top to bottom, there were four teams that were ranked within the College Football Playoff that were ranked higher than the media polls.
One could say if you look at that prism, "Hey, the ACC was looked at very favorably from that committee." If you look solely at Florida State moving up and down, maybe someone could come up with another conclusion, but I just let everybody know everybody walked in there and they were all looked at on an equal playing field each and every week. That's the piece that's going to continue to be an education about the College Football Playoff. It is a clean sheet of paper each week. There are teams that won and fell, there are teams that lost and went up. It depended upon where they were at that part of the year to look at the full body of work. It was most important that we got it right at the end. That's where the whole focus is. It's different than basketball, it's different than all the rest of these because we have these mile posts each and every Tuesday. The middle of November is not the end of the season.
And this:
How did you handle the questions from the ACC coaches about the job the committee did?
DR: The one thing people have to remember is you choose your poison. You either have a living breathing human being evaluate what you're doing and how it's working, or you have gears and diodes putting things in there and spitting it out. Which do you like? You like the response that puts you in the best position. That's the one thing the committee does, whether it's football, basketball, baseball. There's always going to be people that have a different view. Through the 12 or 13 people on that committee, we're going to get that broad brush so that you're going to have a better ranking than if you had three and probably not as good as if you had 36.
A few Thursday links:
-- Aaron Brenner of The Post and Courier deserves some sort of reward for hanging around until after Tuesday's 23-15 football, er, baseball win over Furman to ask Jack Leggett questions about the end of what has all the looks of his last season at Clemson.
Leggett really seems kind of bothered by the fact that fans aren't fully on board with an outfit that has struggled to stay above .500 this year.
We’ve got to play a little bit better, but we’ve got some toughness about us with our backs are against the wall. We’re banding together, hoping people jump with us and give us some positive momentum....
“But give them positive energy – if you’re a Clemson fan or Clemson person, support your team, and that’s the way it should be. If it’s not like that, then we can’t bother with that, because you’ve got to think about how you’re going to win the game....
“I always believe in everything we do. I believe in how we prepare,” Leggett said. “Sometimes you don’t play as well as you prepare. Sometimes things don’t fall into place all the time. To be honest with you, we need a positive vibe around these guys, because it helps them.
“We just need to band together and believe in these guys, because these kids give everything they’ve got. If everybody would be forging ahead in the same spot, I think that’s the most important thing.”
I've said this over and over, but the problem ain't the fans. This isn't Boy Scouts. It's high-level, high-stakes college baseball. Just win.
-- Matt Brown of Sports on Earth with some 2015 breakout candidates for college football, including three from the ACC.
6. Virginia Tech
Last Top 25 finish: 2011
2014 Record: 7-6
Five-Year Recruiting Rank: 24
The Hokies have struggled on offense for several years now, and bad luck has played a role as the running game continues to falter. The good news is that it will never get worse than last year's 3-0 overtime loss to Wake Forest. In fact, it's possible the Hokies could put together a nice rebound season after three consecutive mediocre finishes following a streak of eight double-digit win seasons. For one, the schedule is quite favorable. Beyond the opener against Ohio State, things couldn't set up much better for Virginia Tech, as it somehow avoids Florida State, Clemson, Louisville and Notre Dame. Quarterback Michael Brewer can turn into a solid game manager type with better help around him, starting with an offensive line that allowed 34 sacks last year and a running game that hasn't had anyone rush for more than 675 yards in a season since 2011.
We know Bud Foster will continue to churn out quality defenses, and the Hokies return building blocks on that side in cornerback Kendall Fuller, defensive end Dadi Nicolas and tackle Luther Maddy. The defense alone can win the Hokies a lot of games; getting stability and production from the running game on offense could make the Hokies contenders in the ACC Coastal again. There may finally be a wealth of options in the backfield, and it's just a matter of someone embracing the opportunity, which would take a lot of pressure off Brewer. Upward mobility is very attainable in the Coastal, and Virginia Tech has better infrastructure in place to achieve it than anyone else in the division.
-- Our friends at Warchant were at Amelia Island and spoke with Jimbo Fisher about the idea of a nine-game ACC schedule.
Fisher, FSU athletics director Stan Wilcox and others said Tuesday that a nine-game ACC schedule, which was discussed and voted down last year, is not on the table. That format would force teams to play five road ACC games every other year and would make it extremely difficult for schools like Florida State, which plays an annual non-conference game against Florida, to schedule another high-quality non-conference opponent.
And Fisher said that would not be acceptable because of how it might hurt home schedules. "At the end of the day," he said, "you've got to pay bills and you've got to answer to your fan base." As the ACC meetings entered its final full day on Wednesday, no one seemed to have a clear answer on the future, however.
The conference laid out a variety of options, including removal of permanent crossover opponents, which would allow schools to play teams in the opposite division every three years. But that would put annual rivalries such as FSU-Miami at risk.
Fisher said he hasn't heard of any consensus - other than acknowledgement that something needs to be done.
"It's tough," Fisher said. "Because if you keep the same divisions, you keep your rivalries, then you're never going to play everybody in the league. But if you go, 'All right, keep it eight [games] and rotate your [crossover opponents], then you're not going to have your rivalries every year. … It's really not an easy choice when you sit down and look at it."
-- At Grantland, how saving the Cavs has changed LeBron James.
If James has shown us anything in the last dozen seasons, it’s that he is willing and able to evolve as much as anyone, collecting four MVPs in the process. Given the vast amounts of turnover in his life, it’s no surprise there was some decline in his performance this season, and if this is what an off year looks like, a fifth MVP could easily await.
As James slugs his way through yet another deep playoff run, he’s also giving us all an implicit seminar on the erosion of youthful greatness. It may say “Eastern Conference semifinals” on your cable guide, but the subtext is “great man seeking to overcome early-stage decay.” As James’s once-in-a-generation athleticism fades away, he’ll need to tweak things to keep his kingdom afloat. That may sound bleak, but there is no shortage of superstars who have changed their games to at least distract Father Time.
Reinvention is a prerequisite of NBA greatness. It has also been James’s calling card. And if you’re looking to see what the future might hold, it might help to go back to the summer of 2011, when a frustrated James spent time in Houston learning from Hakeem Olajuwon.
-- And a plug for a really cool event going on Saturday afternoon. If you like beer, barbeque and music you'll most certainly dig the second-annual Wheatfest at Brewery 85 in Greenville. Some band called Soul Stew will be cranking out some tunes there, too.
-- On the topic of soul and stew, here's a detailed recipe from the great chef King Curtis:
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