When the College Football Playoff Selection Committee convenes this fall to determine the teams for the sport’s inaugural 12-team playoff, there will be two representatives from Baylor University present: one from the past and one from the present.
Former interim head coach Jim Grobe, appointed to the committee in 2022, represents the “past Bear.” However, the current Bear generating excitement among fans in green and gold is Baylor’s Director of Athletics, Mack Rhoades.
Rhoades, entering his seventh year at the helm of Baylor Athletics, joins the committee for the 2024 season, embarking on a three-year term. Recognized as the back-to-back national athletics director of the year in 2020 and 2021, Rhoades will be one of 13 selection committee members entrusted with the responsibility of selecting and seeding the new 12-team playoff bracket.
Expressing his gratitude, Rhoades conveyed to ESPN Central Texas’ Matt Mosley (BA ’95), “I’m extremely honored. This is less about me and more about Baylor, what our head coaches, our student-athletes, and our staff have been able to accomplish — so really a tribute to Baylor University and Baylor Athletics. … You can’t commit to something like this without having great people around you. I’m blessed from that standpoint.”
With Rhoades representing Baylor on the CFP selection committee and President Linda Livingstone holding positions as chair of both the NCAA Board of Governors and the Big 12 Conference’s board of directors, Baylor University stands poised to wield influence at the highest echelons of college athletics.
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