With Ari Fleischer on the payroll of college football playoffs, the group never has to wait long for the next rush of negative feedback. They have a publicity consultant who specializes in generating negative publicity. Quite the opposite of what one would want.
Fleischer’s appearance as a moderator at a Saudi-backed LIV Golf press conference on Tuesday was just the latest moment he rolled his eyes at from a guy who never missed a failure while working for CFP. He also appeared regularly as a political commentator on Fox News, which created some discomfort for the college’s athletic organization, which is trying to remain apolitical. And there is almost everything he touched in his role as a faculty football propagandist.
Fleischer was part of a doomed PR effort to save the Bowl Championship Series and prevent the playoffs - that should have been enough to free him from any role in the next iteration of the sport, but no. Fleischer remained on board as a consultant for CFP, proving to be magically flexible in post-season sports.
(It seems really hard to get fired from the Old Boys Club, which runs college football.)
Any influence that the former press secretary of the White House under George W. Bush had in the first seven years of the playoffs, he looked negligible. Only after the unsuccessful introduction of plans to expand the playoffs from four to 12 teams last year, when information leaked in June, found several conference commissioners unhappily unprepared, someone remembered that CFP has a media consultant. The mess around that enlargement plan was enough to derail the expansion in the foreseeable future.
The CFP is inherently controversial enough - four teams subjectively selected by a selection committee of 130 get a chance to win the national championship. The playoffs only make things worse with a weekly television show that publishes its rankings while the second third of the season takes place, and its work is subject to ridicule every Tuesday night. The list of victims is long and loud every season.
Why add accumulated criticism by creating a problem for yourself at home with a consultant like Fleischer? Why have that guy in the room with the most powerful people in college football when making big decisions?
CFP CEO Bill Hancock confirmed that Sports Illustrated On Tuesday, Fleischer is still the group’s consultant. Hancock noted that Fleischer consults with a number of other entities outside the CFP and is not required to inform them of every gig he performs. Neither Hancock nor several other CFP leaders seemed to have any idea about this particular Fleischer business.
Scroll to Continue
Taking money from the government of Saudi Arabia has led to a great return to many of the most prominent golfers in the world, from the great winners Phil Mickelson through Dustin Johnson to Graham McDowell, Sergio Garcia to Martin Kaimer and beyond. They are ready to accept criticism for linking weapons to a brutally repressive regime in exchange for high salaries, and at a press conference led by Fleischer on Tuesday, they did their best to pretend there was no controversy.
When LIV golfer Talor Guch was struck by the question of Saudi Arabia “washing sports” its indecent global image for human rights violations, he replied: “I don’t think that claim is fair. He then tried to get out of that political sand trap by describing himself as, in essence, just a stupid golfer. “I’m not that smart,” Guch said. “I’m trying to hit a golf ball in a small hole. Golf is hard enough. I’m trying to take care of golf, and I’m excited about this week. “
Fleischer has apparently done his part to provide cover for the poor multimillionaires who have been asked questions about anything other than hitting a golf ball in a small hole. Rob Harris, an Associated Press reporter, was reportedly interrupted and sent off from a press conference after he tried to ask a subsequent question about reconciling the attempts of Saudi sports laundering to buy favorable impressions by buying golfers. He was later allowed to return.
Harig: The PGA tour jammer is here, and professional golf may never be the same
It’s all about feeling good. Only good people who are trying to “develop the game” of golf.
Like golfers, Fleischer seems to have a price at which he can renounce his beliefs. According to ESPN Kevin Van Valkenberg, Fleischer was asked at a LIV press conference, “how he reconciled his current relationship with LIV Golf with his past tweets claiming that Saudi Arabia is spending billions to ensure that Muhammad bin Salman is not overthrown,” and wasn’t this an example of that. Fleisher said the tweet was ‘a long time ago’. “
And many dollars ago, it would have been assumed.
The combination of Ari Fleischer and sports seemed to bring very little except shame, wrong steps and slaps on the forehead. Why the Play-off College of Football wants to continue to pay for that nonsense to help him form a strategy is just as mystifying as the reluctance to expand the playoffs.
More games are better. Less Ari is also better. No Ari is the best.
More reporting on college football: