FORT WORTH, Texas -- Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt walked into his suite at Amon G. Carter Stadium on Saturday and immediately found the remote control for the two TVs on the walls and asked for a channel listing.

Hocutt, the new chairman of the College Football Playoff selection committee, had the West Virginia-Oklahoma State game streaming on his phone, and turned the TVs to Michigan-Michigan State and Louisville-Virginia.

"You watch those last two plays," Hocutt said of the Wolverines, "how the linebackers and safeties run downhill, how aggressive they are."

Hocutt, a former linebacker at K-State, pulled two sheets of folded paper out of the inside pocket of his suit jacket and scribbled a note. He wouldn't share the specifics but said he keeps a list of various games he wants to pay attention to, and he makes notes on each team as the day unfolds.

Kirby Hocutt balances his day job as Texas Tech AD with his role as College Football Playoff selection committee chair. Heather Dinich/ESPN.com

At 7 p.m. ET Tuesday on ESPN, when the CFP announces its first top 25 of the season, the college football world will be taking note of everything he says.

Hocutt is the new face of the College Football Playoff, replacing Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long, who is still on the committee but is no longer the chair after a two-year stint. He will be the one tasked with explaining the committee's rationale to the public. It can be an unenviable assignment -- just ask Long -- as his every word will be parsed for meaning and his explanation is the closest the public will get to understanding the deliberations of the 12-member selection committee.

Like Long, Hocutt pulls the double duty of running a Power 5 athletic department while traveling to Grapevine, Texas, to meet every Monday and Tuesday, for six straight weeks to discuss and debate the top 25 teams in the country.

"It's so different for the five sitting athletic directors [on the committee]," he said, "not that it's good or bad, just different."

As the Big 12's playoff chances were taking a nosedive because of losses by West Virginia and Baylor, Hocutt was fist-bumping and hugging the Texas Tech players and coaches in the stadium tunnel while they bounced to the locker room following a desperately needed 27-24 double-overtime win against TCU. During the final minute of the Bears' loss to Texas in Austin, Hocutt was listening to his head coach Kliff Kingsbury in the postgame news conference.

Hocutt cares deeply about the success of the Texas Tech athletes. During the football team's pregame warm-ups, he checked in on the men's and women's cross country results from the 20-yard line. As he walked off the field following the Red Raiders' win over the Horned Frogs, he said, "this is the best part of the job." But he also understands the importance of shedding his Big 12 ties once he steps into the committee meeting room.

"It's too important of a responsibility to not check that allegiance at the door," Hocutt said. "It's not about a particular league; it's about the game of college football, and how important it is to the fan base, and alumni, and young men who commit so much to play at this level and the coaches who give their livelihoods to this game.

"We look at it as individual teams," he said. "When I'm watching a game, I'm not thinking this is a particular conference team, I'm looking at it as a team striving to finish as high in our top 25 as it can. Conference affiliation and conversation does not come up in the room or when I look at teams."

Hocutt has been looking at teams since the start of the season and said he has done his best to ignore the AP rankings next to them.

"I've been very careful not to," he said. "I don't want that in the back of my head in any way."

Hocutt said he didn't start digging into statistics until Week 5, and last week, for the first time, he put 30 teams down on a spreadsheet.

"I've been paying close attention since Week 1," he said. "I've been watching a lot of games. My volume of work watching games is consistent."

Texas Tech AD Kirby Hocutt replaced Jeff Long as the chair of the CFP selection committee. John Weast/Getty Images

That work began on Saturday morning at breakfast at the Red Raiders' hotel in Dallas. Sitting at a table adjacent to where Kingsbury was having his breakfast, Hocutt was flipping between the early games on his phone. Technology is a CFP committee member's best friend. Without it, there's no way each of them would be able to stay abreast of the weekend's games.

By 8 a.m. on Sunday, each of the committee members receives condensed versions of 25-30 games downloaded onto their CFP-provided iPads. The games are similar to the cut ups that coaches look at and can be viewed much faster than a regular broadcast.

"I'll watch some of the games from this afternoon a little closer," Hocutt said on the bus back to the Dallas/Forth Worth International Airport, as he was again flipping through the late games on his phone. "It's so much more efficient to watch the condensed versions. You can volume through so much more in a condensed amount of time."

Hocutt said he stayed up until about midnight Central time on Saturday, and his most serious studying of the games happened between about noon and 6 p.m. CT on Sunday before he had to catch his flight to Grapevine, where he will convene with the rest of the committee to begin their deliberations.

Hocutt said he talked to about half of the committee members over the past few weeks in anticipation of the first ranking.

"It's the right time for us to meet as a committee and start to show our perspective," he said.

Hocutt arrived at the Gaylord Texan Resort around 8 p.m. CT on Sunday, where he continued to watch the Week 9 games and started compiling his list of top 30 teams. Because the committee didn't begin its meetings until 1 p.m. CT on Monday, he also had some time in the morning to review his top 30 teams.

Hocutt obviously knows football, but entering the world of TV is like opening up a new playbook with different terminology.

"What does IFB stand for?" Hocutt asked of the new earpiece he had made so he could hear the analysts in the studio at ESPN. "Is it IFB or IBF?"

He has worked on his pronunciation of Louisville ("It's an uh, not an ee," he says, "Lou-uh-ville, not Lou-ee-ville.")

As he walked off the field at TCU on Saturday following the Red Raiders' win, Hocutt was recognized by a Texas Tech fan who called him over to shake his hand.

"Are you at the Gaylord all weekend?" Kreg Bryant asked from the stands leading into the tunnel.

Hocutt nodded.

"See you on TV on Tuesday," Bryant said. "Smile."

Hocutt already was.