College Football Playoff director ‘infuriated’ after SMU-Alabama call leaked, says mole ‘betrayed’ CFP

LAS VEGAS — College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark said he was “infuriated” by a leak that revealed SMU had made the field before the official CFP announcement on Sunday.

A minute before the Selection Sunday show began on ESPN, Brett McMurphy of the Action Network tweeted, “SMU is in @CFBPlayoff and Alabama is out …” 

It wasn’t until 30 minutes into the show that ESPN revealed the bracket. McMurphy is a veteran sportswriter who has worked at ESPN and CBSSports.com, among other places. 

That is believed to be the first time in the 11-year history of the CFP that a portion of the bracket was revealed before the official announcement.

“We addressed that,” Clark said Tuesday after speaking at the Sports Business Journal Intercollegiate Athletics Forum. “We don’t know how it happened. We addressed it with our staff, we [spoke] with the committee members to remind everybody of their commitment to keeping the rankings close hold [secret] until they’re actually revealed.”

Clark was asked if he was trying to find out specifically where the leak originated.

“We asked some questions, but, no,” he said.

“There’s a couple of different groups where it could come from,” Clark added. “ESPN, it could have been. It could have been one of our committee members. It could have been one of our staff members. The only person who I know it wasn’t, was me.”

SMU was a favorite to make the CFP over Alabama as the sun rose Sunday and odds only accelerated in SMU’s direction in the hours before the selection show. 

Clark, a former Air Force lieutenant general, is in his first year of leading the CFP. The SMU-Alabama decision was considered one of the toughest 11th-hour decisions in CFP history. Eleven years ago, in the first CFP, the…

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Author : Dennis Dodd

Publish date : 2024-12-11 00:09:00

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