Bill Hancock: 'Stacked' top of CFP rankings made for 'probably the toughest' choice in 10-year history

In a word, the final 2023 College Football Playoff rankings were historic. An undefeated Power Five conference champion was left out of the field, as was the team that was No. 1 in the penultimate rankings, marking a first in CFP history for both in the last year of the four-team format.

It seemed like everyone was asking the same question after Saturday’s conference championships: What would the CFP committee do? To executive director Bill Hancock, it was a year like no other.

In fact, Hancock said, it might’ve been the toughest decision the committee has had to make in the CFP’s 10-year history.

“Every year is so different,” Hancock said on a post-reveal teleconference. “Just looking at it from the big picture, we’ve never had a year with eight teams at the top as good as these are, and the five conference champions one through five. We’ve never had it come out that way. My feeling is, it probably was the toughest.

“I’m gonna sound like a coach and say I need to look at the video. I need to go back and look at the year-by-year narrative that we have. But I’ll just repeat, we have not had a year where we’ve had the top stacked so strongly as we had this year.”

Bill Hancock: 12-team CFP will be ‘great,’ but it won’t be perfect

Florida State made a strong case to make the four-team field, armed with a 13-0 record and an ACC title. But the committee made it clear the absence of Jordan Travis played a role in the decision to drop the Seminoles out of the top four, and that was amplified by Tate Rodemaker’s absence in the ACC Championship. FSU’s strength of schedule was also a factor as Alabama came in at No. 4, according to chairman Boo Corrigan.

It sure seemed like a great year for the 12-team format, which is coming next year. When asked about that, Hancock had a good laugh. Then, he said while the expanded field will be an improvement, it’s not going to be perfect. That’s something he wants fans to remember with the new model on its way.

“Twelve’s gonna be great, and we’re all looking forward to it,” Hancock said. “But there will be issues with 12. People look for perfection, and there will be some teams that don’t quite make it in 12 that are going to be asking some serious questions.

“I laughed because the easy answer is to say, ‘Yeah, wish we had 12.’ But that’s not gonna be the panacea that some of us think it might be. It’s gonna be great, don’t get me wrong. But it won’t be perfect.”

As for whether the idea of 12 teams came up during deliberations Saturday night, Corrigan said he wasn’t mentioning the idea around Hancock.

“No, I was not,” Corrigan joked about trying to speed up expansion. “We knew the charge, and no matter how late we stayed up, it was the same charge to get the top four teams.”