Finally, Michigan football has a man on the inside.
The College Football Playoff rankings and subsequent bowl games have been at the mercy of the inclusive selection committee since the organization formed in 2014, but Michigan has not had anyone on said committee since its inception. However, on Tuesday, the College Football Playoff released that there will be a new chair taking over for Iowa athletic director Gary Barta, as well as some new committee members. Among the latter, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel was announced.
Whether that helps the Wolverines or is merely anecdotal remains to be seen, but it can’t hurt having an advocate for the maize and blue inside that room.
Full release
The College Football Playoff (CFP) Management Committee has appointed NC State Athletics Director Boo Corrigan as selection committee chair for the 2022 football season, it was announced today by Bill Hancock, Executive Director of the CFP. Corrigan replaces Gary Barta, the athletics director at the University of Iowa, who served as chair for the past two seasons.
Hancock also announced that the Management Committee has appointed Chet Gladchuk, athletics director at the U.S. Naval Academy; Jim Grobe, longtime head coach at Ohio University, Wake Forest and Baylor; Warde Manuel, athletics director at the University of Michigan; and Kelly Whiteside, longtime sportswriter for USA Today, Sports Illustrated and Newsday, to the CFP Selection Committee.
The new members will begin three-year terms starting this spring. They will replace Barta, Paola Boivin, Charlie Cobb and Tyrone Willingham, whose terms have expired.
“Chet, Jim, Warde and Kelly will be outstanding additions to the committee as we enter our ninth season,” Hancock said. “Their expertise, knowledge and integrity, along with their love of college football, will allow them to fit right in with the returning members.”
“We are pleased that Boo will serve as chair,” Hancock added. “He was an important member of the committee last year, and in this new role he will serve as a great manager inside the room and a wonderful spokesperson to the media and fans.”
“I thoroughly enjoyed my first year on the committee,” Corrigan said. “It was a privilege to serve alongside the other members. I’m honored to be asked to serve as committee chair and look forward to working with an outstanding group of individuals who are deeply committed to college football.”
Corrigan has served as athletics director at NC State since April 2019. During that time, the Wolfpack captured the 2021 NCAA women’s cross country national championship, the first NCAA title ever by a Wolfpack women’s team and the school’s first national title in any sport since 1983. This comes on the heels of an enormously successful 2020-21 campaign where five programs finished in the Top 4 in the nation in their respective polls. NC State finished at No. 23 in the Learfield Directors’ Cup, marking the second-highest finish in school history.
Previously, Corrigan served eight years as director of athletics at West Point. Under his leadership, Army claimed 20 Patriot League regular season or tournament championships and sent 14 teams to the NCAA postseason. Corrigan was named a 2017 Athletic Director of the Year by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics.
Before joining Army, Corrigan worked for three years in the athletic department at Duke, serving as senior associate athletics director for external affairs. Corrigan also served five years as associate athletics director for marketing at the University of Notre Dame and three years as associate athletics director for marketing at the U.S. Naval Academy. He was the assistant director of marketing at Florida State University from 1992 to 1996.
Corrigan received his bachelor’s degree in economics from Notre Dame in 1990 and earned a master’s degree in education from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013.
Gladchuk has served as Director of Athletics at the U.S. Naval Academy for the last 20 years. Gladchuk came to the Naval Academy in 2001 from the University of Houston, where he had been the Director of Athletics for four years.
Before Houston, Gladchuk led his alma mater, Boston College, as its the Director of Athletics, Intramurals and Recreation for seven years. Prior to rejoining Boston College, he served as Director of Athletics at Tulane University from 1987-90 after a 1985-87 stint as an Associate AD at Syracuse University.
Gladchuk lettered in football at Boston College and after graduating went on to earn a master’s degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he began his career in intercollegiate athletics. He also had served as Director of Athletics and head football coach for the New Hampton (Prep) School in New Hampshire prior to leaving for UMass.
Grobe spent 40 years in coaching, including 20 years as head coach at Ohio University (1995-2000), Wake Forest (2001-2013) and Baylor (2016). In 13 seasons at Wake Forest, Grobe led the Demon Deacons to five of the program’s eight all-time bowl appearances at the time. In 2006, Wake Forest won a school-record 11 games and defeated Georgia Tech in the ACC Championship to capture the school’s second-ever ACC title. Grobe’s work that year earned him ACC and National Coach of the Year honors.
Prior to Wake Forest, Grobe spent six years at Ohio University, posting five consecutive winning conference records. His coaching career began in 1975 as a graduate assistant at Virginia. He then spent two seasons as head coach at Liberty High School in Bedford, Va., before returning to the college ranks as an assistant coach at Emory & Henry, Marshall and Air Force.
Grobe played middle guard and linebacker at Ferrum (Va.) Junior College and the University of Virginia, where he earned a bachelor and master’s degree.
Manuel is in his sixth year as Michigan’s Director of Athletics. Manuel returned to U-M following a nearly four-year run as director of athletics at the University of Connecticut. Prior to arriving in Connecticut, he led the athletic department at State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo from 2005-12. A graduate of U-M, where he played football under Bo Schembechler, Manuel was coordinator of U-M’s Wade H. McCree Jr. Incentive Scholarship Program from 1990 to 1993.
He subsequently worked briefly as an academic advisor and assistant athletic director for academics at Georgia Tech before returning to Ann Arbor, where he served in several roles within Michigan’s athletic department from 1996-2005, eventually becoming an associate athletic director with oversight of football, men’s and women’s basketball, hockey and operational facets of the university’s athletic department.
Manuel earned his bachelor of general studies degree with a focus in psychology in 1990, his master’s degree in social work from U-M in 1993 and an MBA from U-M’s Stephen M. Ross School of Business in 2005.
Whiteside spent 14 years at USA Today as the national college football writer and also specialized in covering the Olympics and World Cup. She has covered seven Olympic Games, nine World Cups (men’s and women’s) as well as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and multiple college sports. Whiteside was also the first female president of the Football Writers Association of America. Prior to joining USA Today, she was a reporter at Newsday and a staff writer at Sports Illustrated. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times.
Whiteside has been an Associate Professor in Sports Media and Journalism at Montclair State University since 2014 and has taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Rutgers University.
She is a graduate of Rutgers University and the Columbia Journalism School.
The CFP selection committee is responsible for selecting the top four teams in the playoff and assigning them to semifinal games, as well as ranking the other top 25 teams. The 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. The other returning selection committee members are Mitch Barnhart (athletics director, University of Kentucky), Tom Burman (athletics director, University of Wyoming), Boo Corrigan(athletics director, North Carolina State University), Rick George (athletics director, University of Colorado), Will Shields (former All-American offensive lineman, University of Nebraska), Gene Taylor (athletics director, Kansas State University), Joe Taylor (Vice President for Athletics and Community Wellness, Virginia Union University), John Urschel(member of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ and former All-American offensive lineman, Penn State University), Rod West (group president Entergy Corporation and former linebacker at the University of Notre Dame).
For more information on the selection committee, visit www.collegefootballplayoff.com.
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