Dissenters with the merit of the members reportedly set to serve on college football's inaugural playoff committee next year continue to make themselves heard. Gene Stallings, who coached both the NFL's St. Louis and Phoenix Cardinals, and led Alabama to a national title, joined them Tuesday.
Stallings is concerned that known committee members are short on qualifications.
"I'm very concerned about (the committee)," Stallings told The Chris Stewart Show on Tide 99.1 FM. "I've said this over and over and over that the ones that had to be right was the ones that was selecting the committee. I'm concerned when I look at some of the names in the paper about whether or not they're qualified to pick the best football teams in the country."
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Stallings said he supports a committee "heavily loaded with coaches that have won national championships, maybe hall of fame coaches, or coaches that didn't have an agenda." Stallings didn't specifically name former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose reported membership was scoffed at a day earlier by Stallings' retired, old coaching rival, Pat Dye of Auburn.
South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier backed Rice's place on the committee earlier this week.
"Why not?" Spurrier said. "She's a Stanford graduate (and she) plays a little golf."
While there is obvious merit to the idea that football people should sit on a football playoff selection committee, it's not as though value can't be brought to the board room by anyone else. Rice has experience communicating with entire nations. A communicator like that could certainly be valuable as a presider, an advocate of the procedure, and if necessary, a mediator if the only thing that can pierce the cigar smoke is the yelling.
A committee that could be as large at 18 people would figure to have room for a little diversity. Depending on who is doing the figuring.
"It takes people that have played, it takes people who have coached, and it takes people who have won those big games," Stallings added. "I don't know why we have to be picking people from all of the country that maybe have good positions in other deals -- they're retired military people, they're retired commissioners, they're retired all kinds of people. But have they ever really coached a big game? Sure, I worry about that."
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter @ChaseGoodbread.
