Condoleezza Rice and the College Football Playoff (CFP) selection committee are not going to have an easy task come the end of the season and the job has already proven to be quite consuming.
Speaking with ESPN about the committee, Rice said she will have to miss out on the annual United Arab Emirates conference in Nov. because it is in the middle of a ranking session. The 13-member committee is tasked with picking four teams to play in the inaugural CFP.
"Something has to give," said the former United States Secretary of State. "This year I just didn't make it because it would have come right in the middle of the time we were ranking."
As of week seven, it seems as though Florida State and Auburn are the only teams guaranteed to make the playoff. The Associated Press has the Seminoles ranked first with 35 first-place votes and the Tigers second with 23. There are also two teams tied for third and eight unbeaten teams in the AP's top 10, all told.
"I don't feel a constraint on me right now," she said. "I feel we're going to be balancing a number of things. To a certain extent you have to respect a team that wins the games it plays. Wins and losses matter. Secondly, you have to respect strength of schedule. That's partly the effect of your conference, it's partly the effect of what games you choose to play.
"And this is where I really look forward to getting in the room with venerable coaches like Tom Osborne and Barry Alvarez and Ty Willingham. They're going to have an eye on this that I want to hear and understand what their experience tells them about the best teams."
The CFP committee seemed to have their job done for them with the way the season started, as the AP's top five went unchanged until this week. Now there is uncertainty in the Big Ten, a wild race in the Pac-12 and the SEC is, well, the SEC.
