Buies Creek – Campbell Director of Athletics Bob Roller has been selected as a member of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) Selection Committee for a four-year term beginning with the current 2018 season.
Roller, in his eighth year at Campbell, officially rotated onto the committee this month. The FCS Selection committee consists of 10 athletics directors from the FCS conferences that have automatic qualification status to the football playoffs. It is the only national committee that is 100 percent comprised of athletic directors.
Roller is one of five incoming members on the committee, chaired by Central Arkansas Director of Athletics Dr. Brad Teague. The committee will select 24 teams to play for the championship, with 14 of those receiving at-large slots.
Selection weekend coincides with the last playing date of the regular season, November 17. After conference calls throughout the season, the selection committee will meet in Indianapolis to complete the selections for release on Sunday, November 18. Round 1 of the FCS Playoffs begins on November 24, culminating with the championship game on Saturday, January 5 in Frisco, Texas.
The appointment is the latest national committee to include Roller, who has also served on the prestigious executive committee of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics [NACDA] (2003-07) and the Learfield Sports Directors’ Cup Committee for NACDA, where he was named national chairman (2006).
Since taking over as Campbell Director of Athletics in 2011, Roller has led a department that has reached new heights in academics, facility construction, record fund raising and competition. Roller’s tenure has seen Campbell Athletics achieve its highest academic marks in school history. For 10-consecutive semesters, Campbell student-athletes have maintained an overall grade point average of 3.0 over the 21 NCAA intercollegiate sports (which include more than 630 student-athletes).
Under Roller’s guidance, Campbell’s football team joined the Big South Conference in 2018, moving toward the full NCAA FCS scholarship allotment (63) after a decade in the non-athletic scholarship PFL.
On the field, the women’s golf team has won five Big South Conference championships (2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018) and competed in seven NCAA Regionals and three NCAA Championships; the men’s golf team competed in the 2016, 2017 and 2018 NCAA Regionals; the men’s cross country team has won three-straight Big South titles (2016, 2017, 2018) Big South title; the wrestling team won its first Southern Conference Championship in 2017; the men’s tennis team claimed a Big South Championship and NCAA regional berth in 2018; and the baseball team has won four Big South trophies and made two appearances in the NCAA tournament.
Overall, Campbell Athletics’ 21 Division I programs have seen steady improvement in competition. That culminated with Campbell’s highest ranking in the Big South Conference overall sports trophy standings in both 2017 and 2018 since re-joining the league seven years ago. Campbell won the Big South men’s sport trophy in 2018 and claimed the program’s highest-ever finish in the Learfield Directors’ Cup (97th), a showing that was fifth among the 18 Division I programs in North Carolina and tops among the non-Power 5 conference schools in the state.
