KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. Share your story idea with Tod.
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Bill Hancock loves college football, but it’s been a long time since he’s been able to relax on his couch and watch a weekend slate of games.
Hancock retired earlier this summer as the executive director of the College Football Playoff, a role he’d served in since the CFP’s inception in 2012.
Before that, Hancock had served as director of the Bowl Championship Series since 2009 after joining the BCS staff as an administrator in 2005. Hs résumé also includes 13 years as director of the NCAA Final Four and six years as an assistant commissioner for the Big Eight Conference.
Now, he’ll just be a college football fan.
“It’ll be a new experience,” Hancock said Friday morning. “For 20 years, I could just pick a game anywhere and say, ‘I’d like to come,’ and the (athletic director) would say, ‘Come ahead. We’re glad to have you.’ I love going to games. I love the atmosphere in the stadium, I love the marching bands, love all that — and I could still do it. But we’ll be watching on television right here in Prairie Village.”
Hancock moved to Kansas City with his wife, Nicki, in 1978, joining the Big Eight staff as a service bureau director before his 1983 promotion to assistant commissioner.
He joined the NCAA in 1989, overseeing the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship, before taking a step back for a few years after his son, Will, died in a plane crash in 2001. He served as media director for NCAA men’s basketball on a consulting basis.
Next came the role with the BCS, but Hancock’s legacy now is deeply tied to establishing and expanding the College Football Playoff, which will include 12 teams instead of four this season for the first time.
“People will love December,” Hancock said. “They will love those first-round games, quarterfinals, semifinals. What they will love too is November. We’ve added a lot more energy to November.”
Hancock said he and other CFP staff estimated that as many as 40 teams may still be in playoff contention at Halloween.
“That’s awesome,” he said. “Only 12 will make it, but, if you go into November with 40 in contention, that’s really going to be a great thing.”
All three local teams — Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri — expect to be in that conversation when November arrives.
The Tigers are ranked No. 11 and thrashed Murray State 51-0 in Thursday’s opener, while the Wildcats are ranked No. 18 and kickoff the season Saturday against Tennessee-Martin.
The Jayhawks enter the season ranked No. 22.
KU’s first two home games, including a 48-3 walloping of Lindenwood on Thursday, are at Children’s Mercy Park with conference games slated at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium as David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium undergoes renovations.
“We’ve lived in Kansas City for 46 years, and I don’t remember a season with so much hope and promise for the three local teams,” Hancock said. “... The expansion to 12 has hit at just exactly the right time for our three local teams.”
So did retirement for Hancock, who spent much of the summer with Nicki in Paris working for the U.S. Olympic Committee’s communications team.
“Paris was my 16th Olympics,” said Hancock, who has helped at every Summer Games since 1984 and every Winter Games since 2006. “We loved it. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to come home, always glad to come back to Kansas City, but we didn’t want to leave Paris. It was outstanding. The competition was great, the Games were so well organized and then, of course, the venues were off the charts.”
The Hancocks watched the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, track and field, beach volleyball outside the Eiffel Tower, fencing at Le Grand Palais, water polo, and swimming at the 2024 Paris Games.
But it’s college football season now and for the first time in decades, Hancock can sit back and enjoy the spectacle rather than orchestrate it.
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