Division I-A football playoff

Thomas Hansen, commissioner
Pacific-10 Conference
Los Angeles Times

Discussing college presidents' lack of interest in a Division I-A football playoff:

"College presidents are subjected to a great amount of pressure on a daily basis. Like all of us, they tend to become resistant after that pressure reaches a certain level."

Mark Emmert, chancellor
Louisiana State University
Los Angeles Times

"The official vote of the Southeastern Conference is no playoff system. But part of that might include, speaking for me, a model where a four-team playoff could work.

"On the scale of issues that face me as an academic leader, (the playoff issue) is about a three. We have to keep this in perspective. It is not about solving world hunger. It is about how we play football games."

Mike Tranghese, commissioner
Big East Conference
USA Today

"Our presidents have made (the fact they don't want a playoff) eminently clear. We told everyone, including ABC, that our presidents are not interested in a playoff. They won't talk about it; they won't let us talk about it."

College football overtimes

Mack Brown, head football coach
University of Texas at Austin
USA Today

"You see kids crawling off the field (after games in which several overtimes have been played). With all the talk about safeguards in college football, we'd be better off taking care of the kids who play for five hours in a 71-68 game.

"If you play for five hours and you get home at 5 in the morning, that's not safe."

Turning pro

Houston Nutt, head football coach
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Associated Press

"The grass looks so greener on the other side of that fence and playing on Sunday. That's been all of our goals since childhood, naturally, to play in the NFL.

"Reality says most of your juniors are getting fed information that's not true. They're getting fed information that they're going to be first-day picks. Naturally, that's what someone wants to tell them. Usually it's the friend of a friend of a friend of an agent, who doesn't have the correct information."

African-American coaches

Sylvester Croom, head football coach
Mississippi State University
Sports Illustrated

"There's no doubt. I felt that pressure when I was offensive coordinator in Detroit (from 1997 to 2000). Most of us minorities in those leadership positions have felt that same pressure. This time, despite the fact that my job has some historical significance, I am not going to get caught in that trap."

Fitz Hill, head football coach
San Jose State University
Monterey County (California) Herald

"Right now, African-Americans are evaluated collectively, not as individuals. When you think about Bob Stoops at Oklahoma, you don't think about him as a white coach first, then a college football coach. You just think of him as a college football coach."