What are Condoleezza Rice's football creds?

Please treat this as a GQ question instead of a GD or BBQ Pit question. I’m not implying anything, I’m asking. It’s my vague recollection that she has some interest in football, but I’m not sure of the details.

This article addresses Pat Dye’s comments that she’s not qualified (“…To understand football, you’ve got to play with your hand in the dirt.”) because she hasn’t played football by making some points about the qualifications of some of the other committee members.

Here’s another article discussing this.

So, what are her qualifications?

[FWIW, I think that I would make a fine member of the selection committee. I’d start with the polls, see what Vegas has to say, investigate any discrepancies between the two, and look for a good reason to go against the polls (eg. if the #4 team was in the same conference with, and had already lost to the #1 team, and there was an undefeated conference champion at #5 or so.) I mean, I’d do due diligence, but there’s a good chance that my picks will mirror the AP top 4.

I say that to say that I think that any relatively intelligent, unbiased football fan would be qualified to be on the committee.

Feel free to tell what you would do if you were on the committee after the question of Rice’s football qualifications have been answered. ]

Do my level best to woo Ms Rice. Hell, I’d learn to watch football if that’s what she’s into.
If the job is as you describe, she’s qualified. “Find out what certain people think and agree with that” is straightforward enough.

Are we referring to a ranking committee?

If that’s the case, I don’t think she is exactly qualified. I am speaking out of complete ignorance of her credentials as a football fan, but assuming that she is just an average fan, she couldn’t be qualified. Football is complex and the W-L column isn’t always the best indicator of a team’s rank.

For example, my Florida Gators have an exceptional defense. On the surface, they play a very slow and seemingly bad game. The offense is just odd.

To the average fan, we appear terrible, but in reality we can compete with the best out there. I think it helps to have a certain degree of first hand experience with football to be completely informed.

But that’s just me!

Emphasis mine

No offense, sir, but you do not qualify for the reason that I bolded.

What is your experience? And what “degree of first hand experience” do you require? Wait, before we get on this side discussion, I would like for my initial GQ question to be answered:

What are her football qualifications? [We know that she never played professionally, or in college. We do know that.]

Her father was a football coach, she was engaged to a pro football player AND she got her Master’s degree at Notre Dame. That’s actually better credentials than Notre Dame’s athletic directorcan claim.

She’s as good as anyone but that’s mostly because I’m opposed to the selection committee concept to begin with.

I think all 125 schools in the division should have a vote, Hall of Fame-style. It’s their championship, after all. Require 75% of the vote to get in, keep discarding the low voters round by round until four teams get a sufficient number of votes. Teams voted in are disqualified from voting in ensuing rounds.

Will she watch more than one game a week? Then she’s better qualified than anyone who has played “with their hand in the dirt”, 'cause they don’t.

She’s known to be a big fan and she’s said to be very knowledgeable about the game. That’s about all I know, but whether she is personally qualified or not, Dye’s comments are stupid. That’s the kind of insider/boys’ club thinking that is probably responsible for more dumb decisions in sports than anything else.

? What do you think “watching film” refers to? You play one game and watch others. At a minimum, you watch your next opponent and probably the one after that as well. I’ve seen interviews with FSU players where they talk about one of the advantages of an early game is that they then get to watch the later games live.

I think you missed something. Note my use of present tense; there are no current players on the selection committee.

The selection committee, regardless of quality, has no better chance of selecting the “right” four teams than any other random group of college football observers. There is no known answer to the question, even after the playoffs have concluded. The selection committee is being chosen for its character and credibility, not its football expertise.

Condoleezza Rice, in and of herself, is not the issue. She came up in debate because Pat Dye, among other people, have made a big deal of the idea that only people who’ve played the game can possibly be qualified to judge the teams and decide who’s worthy of inclusion in the mini-playoff. That, of course, suggested that women are ineligible for the selection committee, and so are any writers or analysts who didn’t play college football.

Condi Rice is not a particularly well qualified person- when it comes to football, she’s a very knowledgeable fan and the daughter of a football coach, but not much more than that. However, other committe members are no more qualified than she is.

Thing is, all sorts of people who HAVE played and/or coached college football would be bad choices for the selection committee, assuming the committee idea itself is a sound one (I’m unconvinced). Nick Saban, for instance, is a brilliant coach and knows way more about college football than most people. BUT… you think he’s watched (much less studied) Oregon or Stanford? You think he’s watched (much less studied) Louisville or Ohio State? I’m sure he hasn’t, and he SHOULDN’T! It’s his job to know everything possible about the teams in his conference and on his schedule. He’ll worry about the other teams when it’s relevant.

It’s the same with other top college coaches. Even if we assume they’d try hard to be unbiased and fair, a committee of Bob Stoops, Pat Fitzgerald, Brian Kelly, Dabo Swinney and Les Miles (smart coaches all) wouldn’t necessarily make good choices, because they have tunnel vision. They don’t watch any more college football games than I do (probably far fewer), and don’t know much about teams outside their cnferences and/or not on their schedules.

Any committee will be flawed. Condi Rice would be no more flawed than any other committee members. Like the rest, she’d be trying to make intelleigent GUESSES as to which are the best teams.

Players and coaches watching film for upcoming opponents is entirely separate from poll voters watching games. It’s highly unlikely that even Harris Interactive members watch more than five or six games each week (if that), yet they are asked to evaluate and rank forty or more teams to get to the top 25. The laughable USA “Coaches” poll posits that all NCAA head coaches have the time and inclination to rank teams beyond the next opponent. I assume the work of mirroring existing opinions and school reputations is farmed out to a student volunteer pretty much everywhere.

I’ve posted this before, but will do so again: Bucky Goldbolt was the running backs coach here at the University of Texas during the John Mackovic era. He’s now a radio talk show host in Austin.

Goldbolt says that every week, Mackovic would hand him the coaches poll ballot and say, “Here, fill this out, I don’t have time.” Godbolt didn’t really have time either, and rarely got to watch any college football, so what did he do? He just looked at last week’s rankings, dropped everyone who lost a few notches, raised everyone who won a few notches, and turned in his ballot.

COULD Mackovic have been a very smart, competent voter? Sure- but he didn’t even try to be, because the ballot just wasn’t important to him. And it wasn’t just him. I’m sure that MOST coaches hand off their ballots to an assistant coach, an information director, or an athletic department secretary.

No, that is not what Dye said. He said “I want people on this committee that can watch tape,” which clearly does not mean the mere ability to watch a game. He’s saying committee members should be able to break down the game play by play the way coaches do with their assistants and players. To me, that skill doesn’t seem all that relevant to the committee’s job.

How much autonomy does this comittee have, anyway? They’re just selecting the four playoff teams, right? How far off from the composite top 4 can they go? When choosing between #4 and #5, are these members really expected to break down plays, and not just stats?

A politically-connected woman with a healthy passion for football seems like a good diversity move to me.

If she represents the interests of the Average College Football Fan, not just people who can be too far inside the business, then she might be a very good addition. All I’d want to know is how much of a fan she is.

She’s featured in an NFL ad talking about how, as Secretary of State, she still would drop everything and watch the Super Bowl every year, no matter where she was in the world, including waking up at 3:00am local time in Israel. And in searching her credentials for this thread, I found numerous anecdotes of her avidly attending games while a professor at Stanford and other stories indicating a passionate fan of the game.

In 1989, the NFL selected Paul Tagliabue to be commissioner. Tagligabue had never played or coached a football game on any level and his hiring is the reason that the NFL is the bankrupt failure and low ratings joke it is today*. If only the NFL had selected Pat Dye and his dirty hands, things would be a lot different. Can we risk Ms Rice becoming the college football equivalent of Paul Tagliabue?

*I may be wrong about the bankrupt joke part.

Rice was supposedly considered as a replacement for Tagliable when he retired. So there’s that.