One-on-one with Baylor AD Mack Rhoades, part 3: 'The Big 12 will continue to have its place'

Zach Smith: How excited are you to be on the CFP Selection Committee and how much does it mean to you to get that call?

Mack Rhoades: I truly look at it as an unbelievable honor and an unbelievable privilege. I'm as big a college football fan is as there is out there. I love from college football. To be part of a committee that helps to determine the playoff, it’s a particularly exciting time when you think about going from four to 12 (teams).

I think about (fellow committee member and former Baylor football coach) Jim Grobe and being able to see Coach Grobe. Man, I love that dude. When you do meaningful work together, you grow a strong strong bond, and him and I did that together here that 2016 season.

I think it speaks to the Baylor brand as well. I think it's less about me and more about the Baylor brand. When (CFP Executive Director) Bill Hancock called me, I was obviously excited and fired up. But then you quickly think, OK, how do I this at an elite level and still do my Baylor role, which is the most important role, at an elite level? You can't, unless you have great people around you. I'm blessed to have really great staff and great coaches around me that allows me to pour into college football.

I think college football is at a critical time right now. I think it's an unbelievable game. As one of many stewards of the game, we've got to be really thoughtful and careful in how we how we protect it and how we grow it.

Smith: Did having a previous relationship with Grobe and the rest of the committee members make the decision to join easier?

Rhoades: What it is, it maybe provided some some comfort for me.

I had the blessing of working with Gary Pinkel for an entire year at Missouri, and that's that's going to be cool.

I think about (Selection Committee Chair and Michigan AD) Warde Manuel, him and I were ADs together in the MAC, he was AD at Buffalo and I was the AD at Akron. We've got some pretty good short stories to share, but certainly had had a great time together at conference meetings.

(Arkansas AD) Hunter Yurachek was my number two at Akron and then at Houston.

Those relationships are certainly a really, really cool part of it.

Smith: Speaking of relationships, you’re close with Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark. As college football changes and expands, where do you see the Big 12 fitting into the big picture?

Rhoades: I think the Big 12 will continue to be relevant and continue to have a spot when you think of highest level of college football and highest level of college athletics. Whether that remains a Power Four or if that’s how (NCAA President Charlie) Baker describes this new NCAA Division I subdivision with the highest-resourced institutions. I like the Big 12 will continue to have its place.

Commissioner Yormark is extremely aggressive, and as things continue to change and evolve, I think we'll we'll still be right in the thick of it along with the other three conferences.

Smith: Foster Pavilion opened, Fudge Football Development Center is coming along. I know you’re a big picture guy, what is Baylor’s next big project?

Rhoades: The next big project doesn't necessarily come in the form of a building.

So I think the next big project for us is how does Baylor continue to be nationally relevant in the in the college athletic space? When we think about what's next, this idea of revenue share. There's going to be revenue share, and what does that mean, how much is that annually and who gets it, who doesn't get it? How do you navigate that?

I think about the sustainability of NIL, it’s not going away.

The new potential NCAA Division I subdivision. Scholarship limits increasing. How do you do that? All of the other deregulation. What happens if student-athletes become employees? That’s certainly on the table in and in the court systems.

We want to be a leader in that space. We want to be out in front when we think about all of those moving, changing pieces. (There’s) not a lot of clarity right now. So we're trying to figure out which ones we run out and which ones we wait and see for a little bit a little bit longer. Our next big thing is figuring out how we continue to be nationally relevant in the midst of this chaos and rapidly changing landscape.

I think things are going to change sooner than what people anticipate when we think about just the revenue share pieces and some of the deregulation.

That doesn't mean that we don't have facility projects on on the horizon. That's certainly part of it is as well. We think about baseball, and we haven't done a lot in a long time to Baylor Ballpark. That's on our minds. How do we accommodate volleyball and acrobatics and tumbling into the Ferrell Center?

And then this idea of, in this ever-changing landscape, how do we serve our student-athletes? Our student-athlete population is changing. We're still going to have a lot of student-athletes that are going to be here three or four years, but what about the student-athletes that are only one year? How do we serve them when we think about our four pillars of preparing champions for life? All of that is is top of mind and and certainly priority for us right now.

Smith: Why do you do what you do? What drives you and keeps going on a day to day basis?

Rhoades: I think my adrenaline and my excitement comes from the challenge, it comes from the chaos.

This is the longest I've ever been at any one place. I've had to kind of wrestle with that and challenge myself (because) I don't ever want to be at a place where I'm bored. In seven years here, for whatever reason, I've never been bored.

It's the challenge of all of the moving pieces and the rapidly changing environment. The challenges that we've had that have been specific to Baylor, I think those are things that the strategy and figuring out how we attack all of these things. That's what I really, really love.

When we think about college athletics, this is what gets lost, I do think at the end of the day, when you think about our coaches, and you think about our administrators, bottom line, we're educators pouring into young people. We’re educating them not just in terms of academics in books, but in terms of life, in terms of their relationship with Christ, spiritual growth. I love that piece. The opportunity to pour into into young people, I think we've got coaches and staff that really embrace that.

Baylor and the people that we have, we’re able to work with some elite leaders and folks. I certainly learn a lot from them.