National Football Foundation

Spending a lifetime working in college athletics, Bill Hancock was a natural to take on a leadership role during a period of incredible transformation over the past two decades.

Hancock was the first full-time director of the NCAA Men's Final Four from 1989 to 2002. He later became the first full-time administrator of the Bowl Championship Series in 2005, assuming the role of executive director of the BCS in 2009. At the BCS, he administrated a wide range of tasks associated with staging the title game, which pitted the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams. During the season, he worked closely with the NFF to tabulate and release the weekly BCS rankings.
 
When the College Football Playoff was formed in 2012, he transitioned to become the executive director of the new four-team postseason format, which will expand to 12 teams after the 2023-24 season. At the CFP, his key responsibilities have included overseeing the game’s media rights, negotiating agreements with the bowl games and host cities, overseeing the staff, and managing the selection committee. The CFP’s inaugural championship game was recognized by the Sports Business Journal as the Sports Event of the Year.
 
Hancock announced in June that he will step down at the end of this season and officially retire on Feb. 1, 2025, after more than a decade of leadership.
 
During his tenure at the CFP, he has served on the NFF Future For Football Steering Committee, the NFF’s initiative that promotes football stories that inspire and inform millions of fans each year about the good in the game. Realizing the importance of the NFF’s leadership role in promoting the scholar-athlete ideal, Hancock has lent the CFP’s national spotlight to highlight the accomplishments of the NFF Campbell Trophy® winner each year in the stadium during the title game.
 
Graduating from Oklahoma with a degree in journalism, he began his career in 1971 as assistant sports information director with the Sooners. He then spent four years as editor of the Hobart (Oklahoma) Democrat-Chief newspaper, followed by 11 years on the Big Eight Conference staff under Commissioner Chuck Neinas (the 1999 NFF Outstanding Contribution to Amateur Football Award recipient) and overlapping with NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell, who was an associate commissioner at the Big Eight at the time.

Hancock has served on the United States Olympic Committee staff at 15 Olympic Games and two Pan American Games. He has been inducted into the halls of fame of the state of Oklahoma, College Sports Communicators and the All-College Basketball Classic.