CFP exec. director Hancock to step down in ’25

06/21/2023

College football reporter
Joined ESPN.com in 2007
Graduate of Indiana University

College Football Playoff executive director Bill Hancock will retire when his contract expires Feb. 1, 2025, the CFP announced following a routine June meeting in Half Moon Bay, California, on Wednesday.

Hancock, 72, will remain in his current position through the 2023-2024 season. He’ll then take on a consultant role to the new executive director when the CFP expands from the current four-team playoff to the new 12-team format for the 2024-25 season.

Hancock was named executive director of the CFP a few months after the event was created in 2012. According to the CFP, he was the only employee at the time. The commissioners of the 10 FBS conferences and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick “directed him to finalize the details of a media rights agreement, negotiate agreements with bowl games and championship-game host cities, build a staff, find office space, contact members to serve on the selection committee, and draft protocol and procedures for the committee to use,” according to the release.

“My time at the CFP has been a dream come true,” Hancock said in a prepared statement. “I cherish what I do and the folks I get to work with. And I do love college football.”

Hancock said a plan had been established for him to notify the CFP’s board of managers a year in advance if he decided to step aside so they had ample time to find and transition to the next executive director.

“Everyone who is blessed to work with Bill knows he is a highly skilled administrator, strong leader and truly good person,” said Mississippi State president Mark E. Keenum, the chair of the CFP board of managers, in a prepared statement. “He’s a legend in college sports.”

“Bill Hancock has led the highest level of postseason college football for nearly two decades and has done so with incredible steadiness and collaboration,” said ACC commissioner Jim Phillips in a statement. “His love for college athletics, and specifically the student-athletes, has radiated throughout his 50-year distinguished career and we look forward to his continued expertise.”

Hancock was the first full-time director of the NCAA Men’s Final Four, and the first administrator of the Bowl Championship Series. He joined the BCS in 2005 after 16 years with the basketball tournament. Hancock began his career in 1971 as assistant sports information director at the University of Oklahoma, then spent four years as editor of the Hobart (Oklahoma) Democrat-Chief newspaper, then 11 years on the Big Eight Conference staff.

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