The College Football Playoff selection committee will release its first top-25 rankings on the evening of Tuesday, November 5. The rankings will be revealed on ESPN between the Kansas-Duke and Michigan State-Kentucky basketball games, which should be around 9:15 p.m.

After this week, rankings will be released every week up until December 8, when the Playoff semifinalists and New Year’s Six Bowl teams will be announced. So now we pose the question, who is this mysterious group of people who will decide the fate of Penn State football, and the rest of the FBS?

Rob Mullens, Chair (Oregon)

Rob Mullens serves as the chair of the selection committee and is the director of athletics at Oregon. He was hired by Oregon in 2010 and has led the school to the most successful decade in its history, including a second-place finish in the 2014 College Football Playoff.

Gary Barta (Iowa)

Gary Barta is the director of athletics at the Iowa. He also serves on the NCAA Division I Council. Barta was named the Under Armour Athletic Director of the Year by the NACDA during the 2015-16 school year. He received his bachelor’s degree from North Dakota State University.

Frank Beamer (Virginia Tech)

Frank Beamer is a retired former head coach of Virginia Tech and has 49 years of college football experience as both a student-athlete and a coach. Before Beamer retired in 2015, he was the winningest active coach in FBS history.

Paola Boivin (Arizona State)

Paolo Boivin is a professor at Arizona State, but she received her degree from the Illinois in 1982. She serves as the only woman on the committee and was the first female journalist to be named to the Arizona Sports Hall of Fame in 2017, thanks to her work for The Arizona Republic from 1994 to 2017.

Joe Castiglione (Oklahoma)

Joe Castiglione works as the director of athletics at Oklahoma. He received his bachelor’s degree from Maryland in 1979 and his master’s in education from Oklahoma in 2007. Castiglione also served three terms as the chair of the Big 12 Board of Athletic Directors and is a member of the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame.

Ken Hatfield (No Current Affiliation)

Ken Hatfield is a retired coach who originally graduated from Arkansas, where he also played defensive back on the football team. Hatfield has coached at Rice, Clemson, Arkansas, and Air Force. During his career, he collected four conference championships and appeared in ten bowl games.

Chris Howard (Robert Morris)

Dr. Chris Howard has been the president of Robert Morris since 2016 and has three degrees from the Air Force Academy, Oxford, and Harvard. He also is a retired Air Force reserve lieutenant colonel and a winner of the William V. Campbell Trophy for being the nation’s best senior football scholar-athlete in 1990.

Ronnie Lott (USC)

Ronnie Lott is a retired NFL player who was a defensive back in the league for 14 years following a first-round selection in the 1981 draft out of USC. Lott is also a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and the USC Athletics Hall of Fame.

Terry Mohajir (Arkansas State)

Terry Mohajir is the director of athletics at Arkansas State, where he also received his bachelor’s in sports management in 1993. He also has coaching experience at Kansas, where he was the assistant offensive line and game-day special teams coach for three years.

Ray Odierno (Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff)

Ray Odierno is retired but previously served as the United States Army Chief of Staff between 2011 and 2015. Ray has degrees from NC State, Naval War College, West Point, and the Army and Navy War Colleges. Odierno also has a very impressive military career which nearly spanned 40 years, including being the commander of the infantry division responsible for capturing Saddam Hussein.

R.C. Slocum (Texas A&M)

R.C. Slocum is a McNeese State graduate but is currently the interim athletics director at Texas A&M. He has more than 30 years of college football coaching and playing experience at a handful of universities and is the winningest active coach in Texas A&M history.

Todd Stansbury (Georgia Tech)

Todd Stansbury is the director of athletics at Georgia Tech, where he received his degree in 1984. Stansbury has been the athletic director at three different FBS programs including Oregon, UCF, and Oregon State.

Scott Stricklin (Florida)

Scott Stricklin works as the director of athletics at Florida, but he has experience at 6 FBS schools. He originally graduated from Mississippi State in 1992 and was recognized as the UnderArmour Director of the Year in 2016.

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Those 13 people control who’s in and who’s out when it comes to the College Football Playoff, so if you run into them make sure to be extra nice. The currently No. 5 AP ranked Nittany Lions are looking to get their first Playoff berth during the Playoff era.