Baylor Hires Public Relations Firm To Lobby For CFB Playoff Spot

Tonight, the latest rankings from the College Football Playoff committee will be released. With this being the first season under this format, we are still learning what's important and what's not important to the committee when it comes to evaluating the potential participants.

Even with just a week left in the regular season (which, for CFP purposes, includes conference title games), there are still a ton of moving parts. How will the committee evaluate strength of schedule? How important will conference titles be? Are head to head results going to matter at some point?

These are all legitimate questions, and none of us knows the answer yet. Hell, the committee themselves may not know the answer yet! However, when it comes to making sure the committee properly evaluates their resume, there is one school that is taking no chances.

Baylor, we salute your moxie!

Perhaps sensing that an out of conference schedule that consists of SMU, Northwestern State, and Buffalo might not be wowing the committee, perhaps sensing that a two touchdown loss to 7-5 West Virginia (in which the Bears committed 215 yards worth of penalties), and certainly concerned over the committee's lack of "give a shit" (thus far, at least) regarding the Bears head to head win over TCU, Baylor brought out the big guns.

Per ESPN.com's Jake Trotter, who covers the Big 12, we learned this today:

Now, just to clarify, Trotter did inform us that the Sullivan firm would be appealing to the media, not the committee itself (because nobody backs Tyrone Willingham into a corner, dammit! At least not without paying him millions in severance pay.):

I know what Baylor is hoping to accomplish with this chess move (actually, more of a Candy Land move). They're hoping that if they subliminally plant the seeds that the Bears' resume is one of the top four in the country that we will talk about it enough on our radio shows and in print/on the web to where it influences the committee members into thinking "Hey, you know what? Hanging 70 on Buffalo may be harder than it looks!"

And if the beginning of their first email to select media members is any indicator, it appears they are planning on using the "treat everyone like they have a remedial understanding of how sports work" approach, which always works well with a populace who thinks its (ok, our) IQ is 40 points higher than it actually is. Here is that email:

I don't know how much Baylor is spending on Sullivan's services. I do know this, though -- it's way too much money to merely send repeated emails with the box score of the TCU game to a chorus of eye rolls in the media, and yet is still far better money spent than the whatever Marshall invested in their P.R. firm to convince the committee of the Thundering Herd's playoff worthiness.

Marshall finally made their first appearance in the Top 25 last week. At number 24. (And promptly lost to Western Kentucky last weekend.) Yeah, the P.R. firm "thing" is probably not the best idea.

Listen to Sean Pendergast on SportsRadio 610 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays. Also, follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/SeanCablinasian.