Bill Hancock on Warde Manuel's position on CFP committee: 'It just wasn't an issue'

Even amid the release of the initial College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday, the questions about the Michigan sign-stealing scandal were aplenty. Especially given the fact that Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel is currently serving a stint on the selection committee.

But on a media call after the rankings release, committee chair Boo Corrigan and CFP executive director Bill Hancock downplayed any issues about Manuel being in the room. Neither seemed overly concerned about impacts to credibility or perception.

“There wasn’t any suggestion that anything changed regarding Warde’s position on the committee. He was fully engaged in the meeting the last two days, as usual,” Hancock said.

Corrigan added some more context around Manuel’s work with the selection committee going on as usual.

“To Bill’s point, [Manuel] was completely engaged in everything that was going on. Obviously, he gets recused early in the process, if you will, with our ranking. But was in the room, was engaged, was making the points that he had seen from the teams that we were talking about, was a really good committee member, as all 12 of them were,” Corrigan said.

The recusal referenced by Corrigan is required of all the members of the committee if the school they are affiliated with comes up for discussion and has become common practice for various members of the committee through the years. Michigan evidently was discussed early in the process, but other than that portion of the discussion, Manuel was apparently a full member of the process.

Then Hancock and Corrigan were asked if the inclusion of someone high up at Michigan could hurt the credibility of the committee. The answer, from Hancock, was a rather plain no.

“It just wasn’t an issue. Warde brought credibility when he came to the committee, and he still has it. As Boo and I both said, he was fully engaged today. It’s just not an issue here,” Hancock said.

The Michigan sign-stealing scandal didn’t affect the Wolverines’ ranking

Corrigan on Tuesday expressed that the committee doesn’t feel it’s their job to address the Michigan sign-stealing scandal in their rankings. Michigan placed No. 3 in the initial CFP rankings released on Tuesday evening.

As the NCAA investigation into Michigan bleeds into a third week — and will likely take months — Corrigan indicated the group of people charged with picking the playoff field aren’t factoring in the NCAA probe of the Wolverines. He explained some of their thinking to ESPN on the rankings reveal show.

“Our job as we look at it is to rank the teams and to follow our protocols,” Corrigan said. “As we went through it, that wasn’t part of any of the discussions that occurred during our time together.”

He continued, saying the issue was an NCAA issue, not one for the College Football Playoff committee to be in the business of addressing. Corrigan reiterated their focus was on producing a ranking of the Top 25 teams that have played this year, an exercise that would seemingly have to include the Wolverines.

“We really view it as an NCAA issue, not a CFP issue. At this point in time, as we’re looking at this, we want to make sure we get — not just the top four teams but the top 25 teams, right?” Corrigan said.