College Football Playoff Announces Selection Committee Class

Bill Hancock, Executive Director of the College Football Playoff (CFP), today announced that Paola Boivin, Joe Castiglione, Ken Hatfield, Ronnie Lott, Todd Stansbury and Scott Stricklin have been appointed to the selection committee by the CFP Management Committee. The new members will each begin a three-year term this spring.

“These are high integrity people who know and love college football,” Hancock said. “Each one of them has built a distinguished career based on diligence and doing things the right way. We’re delighted that they will be joining the committee.”

An award-winning sports columnist, Paola Boivin worked for The Arizona Republic for more than 20 years prior to taking a job in the sports journalism program at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Before joining the Republic in 1994, she was a columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. Boivin is a graduate of the University of Illinois.

Boivin won numerous awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors and National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association. She also served as president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM). In November 2017, Boivin was the first female journalist to be named to the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame.

Joe Castiglione is the University of Oklahoma’s Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Programs and Director of Athletics. Since his appointment in 1998, Oklahoma athletics has captured 17 national championships and 79 conference titles, while setting records for GPA and graduation rate. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Castiglione spent 17 years at the University of Missouri, serving five of those years as the director of athletics (1993-98).

Castiglione has served three terms as the chair of the Big 12 Board of Athletics Directors. He was awarded the Bobby Dodd Award for Athletics Director of the Year in 2004 and was named National Athletics Director of the Year by the Sports Business Journal in 2009. He was also voted by both his peers and the media as the nation’s top athletics director in a Sports Illustrated poll conducted in 2017. He is a former chair of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee.

Prior to his retirement in 2005, former head coach Ken Hatfield guided three different Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs to Top 20 seasons. Throughout his career, Hatfield won four conference championships and led his teams to ten bowl games, posting a career record of 168-140-4.  Hatfield is retired.

Awarded the American Football Coaches Association’s (AFCA) Amos Alonzo Stagg Award in 2015, Hatfield was most recently the head coach at Rice University (1994-2005). Prior to his tenure at Rice, he was the head coach at the U.S. Air Force Academy (1979-83), the University of Arkansas (1984-89) and Clemson University (1990-93). A graduate of Arkansas, he was an All-Southwest Conference defensive back on the 1964 national championship team.

A consensus All-American at the University of Southern California, Ronnie Lott played professional football for 14 seasons before retiring in 1995. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000. An eight-time first-team All-Pro selection and 10-time Pro-Bowl defensive back, Lott played on four Super Bowl-winning teams. He is now a businessman in the San Francisco Bay area.

During his time at Southern California, Lott helped the Trojans claim a national title in 1978, followed by appearances in back-to-back Rose Bowl Games. Named to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2002, Lott graduated from Southern California in 1981 – the same year he was selected in the first round of the NFL draft.

Todd Stansbury was named director of athletics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in September 2016. A football student-athlete at Georgia Tech from 1980 to 1984, Stansbury served as the program’s assistant athletic director for academics from 1988 to 1995.

Prior to his return to Georgia Tech, Stansbury served as the athletics director for two FBS programs – Oregon State University (2015-16) and the University of Central Florida (2012-15). From 2003 to 2012, Stansbury was the executive associate athletic director at Oregon State.

Scott Stricklin is the director of athletics at the University of Florida. He previously served six years in the same role at his alma mater, Mississippi State University. During his time at Mississippi State, Stricklin oversaw record fundraising and helped the department achieve its highest-ever Learfield Director’s Cup finish. He was named Under Armour’s Athletics Director of the Year in 2016.

In addition to Florida and Mississippi State, Stricklin has worked in athletics departments at four other FBS institutions – the University of Kentucky (2003-08), Baylor University (1999-2003), Tulane University (1998) and Auburn University (1993-98).

The CFP Selection Committee is responsible for selecting the top four teams in the playoff and assigning them to semifinal games as well as placing the next group of teams in the remaining New Year’s bowls. The selection committee meets in-person beginning late in the football season and produces a ranking of the top 25 teams each week, leading up to its final selections. For more information on the selection committee, visit www.collegefootballplayoff.com.