“We have a lot of things to iron out.”

Hey, Jeff Long is fist-bumping with Bill Hancock!  I mean, how nerdy cool is that?

In the meantime, they’ve got to sharpen their pencils and figure out a game plan for selling the public on how the biases and conflicts of interest on the playoff selection committee will totally not be a problem.  There are a couple of ways to skin that cat from their perspective.  And that’s the only perspective that matters.

The selection committee is scheduled to meet again April 2-3, again in the Dallas area. Their hope, according to Hancock, is to present a recusal policy to the CFP’s management committee — the 10 FBS commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick — in time for consideration at that group’s meeting in late April.

So what can they do?  One, sell a procedure.

Long wouldn’t discuss specific possibilities under consideration. Although the CFP selection committee is modeled after its basketball counterpart, its decisions are expected to draw far more scrutiny. Controversy is probably unavoidable. But it’s imperative that, as far as possible, the committee’s policies and procedures anticipate and address potential issues. They can’t be making things up on the fly, or tweaking them after the fact.

Stop laughing.

Okay, if that doesn’t work, there’s another way to go.  Sell the committee members.

“There’s many places you could draw the line,” Long said. “However, I think the overriding issue for us, too, is the integrity of the people. They were selected because of their high integrity. That will factor into the ultimate decision of what the recusal policy should be.”

Go ahead, you can trust them.  Because those folks are completely different from everyone else with a hand in college athletics. Also, transparency.

Just remember, there’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a bigger playoff field.  Brackets heal all wounds.