For nearly 14 years, Charles Bloom has kept a secret. On the campus of the University of South Carolina, inside his office, buried within a cabinet, tucked beneath some old newspapers, are handwritten relics of one of his career’s most important—and clandestine—missions. The 13 pages of white easel paper are proof of the secret five-person committee charged by a group of conference commissioners in 2007 with exploring a College Football Playoff.
Bloom, 59, a longtime athletic administrator who is now the Gamecocks’ executive associate AD, sifts through the papers. “Some of this looks like chicken scratch,” he laughs.