Last Updated on August 4, 2026 6:36 pm
NEW ORLEANS — The CFP Management Committee has appointed current App State athletic director Doug Gillin to the CFP Selection Committee, College Football Playoff executive director Rich Clark announced Tuesday.
Gillin will replace Dr. Bryan Maggard, who recently became the deputy athletic director/COO at Missouri after serving as Louisiana's athletic director. He will serve a three-year term, spanning the 2026, 2027 and 2028 football seasons.
“We are pleased to welcome Doug Gillin to the selection committee,” said Clark. “He is a highly respected leader who brings tremendous experience, sound judgment and a deep commitment to college football and student-athletes. We look forward to the contributions he will make as a member of the committee.”
Entering his 12th year in Boone, Gillin has overseen the rise of App State Athletics as a nationally recognized program at the highest level of college sports, highlighted by App State football's multiple conference championships and a Top 25 final CFP ranking in 2019 since ascending to the FBS level.
Gillin was hired as the school's Director of Athletics in February 2015, during the early stages of App State's transition from the NCAA's Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the Sun Belt Conference at the FBS level. He was named one of four national Under Armour Athletics Directors of the Year in 2019-20.
App State was the first college football program to win bowl games in each of its first six eligible FBS seasons (2015-20), and the program's 98 wins since 2015 rank in the Top 15 nationally. The Mountaineers won four-straight Sun Belt championships from 2016-19, and the 2019 squad that went 13-1 became the first Sun Belt or North Carolina FBS school to win 13 games. Between winning Sun Belt division titles in 2021 and 2023, the Mountaineers followed a 17-14 win at No. 6 Texas A&M in 2022 by hosting ESPN's College GameDay for the first time.
Gillin, who served on the NCAA Division I Football Oversight Committee from 2020-23, was previously the deputy director of athletics at Missouri from 2012-15. He also spent time early in his career on college campuses at Lehigh, New Mexico, and Syracuse, while holding senior leadership positions at ISP Sports/IMG College from 2002-12.
The Binghamton, N.Y., native was a four-year letterman in ice hockey at SUNY Cortland. He graduated from SUNY Cortland in 1991 with a B.S. in physical education and earned a master's degree in physical education from Ohio University.
The CFP Selection Committee is responsible for ranking the 25 teams in the playoff and assigning the top 12 participants to the playoff bracket. The committee meets in-person beginning late in the football season and produces a ranking of the top 25 teams each week leading up to its final selections.
