Brock’s life in the fast lane
Laila Brock
Laila Brock won six PIAA gold medals, including four in 1996, as a member of the Wash High track team.
Laila Brock always could get from one place to another quickly and smoothly. And she excelled when working against the clock.
Those traits helped Brock become one of the best sprinters in Washington High School track history and a six-time PIAA champion. Those same traits come in handy in Brock’s job as director of team operations and logistics for the recently completed College Football Playoff.
Brock handled the logistical planning for the four teams – Alabama, Florida State, Oregon and eventual national champion Ohio State – that participated in the three games of the first College Football Playoff. She was in charge of planning everything from hotel accommodations to practice sites to transportation for the teams to what kind of banners were displayed in the cities that hosted the three playoff games.
“I was in charge of managing the student-athlete experience as well as managing the transition from the two semifinal games to the national championship,” Brock explained. “There were a lot of other details I handled, from the fan festivals to being in charge of the citywide decor. I was rather busy.”
Brock was even in charge of booking the entertainment – Lenny Kravitz and Sting – for the AT&T Playoff Playlist Live concerts held in Dallas the two nights before the national championship game.
Ohio State upset Oregon, 42-20, to win the first College Football Playoff title game Jan. 12 in Arlington, Texas.
“It was an absolutely amazing experience,” Brock said. “It was like meeting 80,000 of your closest friends in North Texas.
“I had a good time with it. It’s all about the student-athletes having a good experience, and it came off great. I had a fantastic staff and event producers who I worked with. It was a phenomenal event. I had a few small fires to put out, but otherwise everybody had a fantastic time.”
The championship game capped a busy 17 months of planning for Brock and the CFP staff. It also ended a hectic three-week period in which Brock worked in three cities. Brock spent Dec. 28th to 30th in Pasadena, Calif., helping with the logistics for Oregon and Florida State in the Rose Bowl Jan. 1. She left California Dec. 30 for New Orleans, where she was on-site for the Sugar Bowl that matched Alabama and Ohio State. Then it was back to Dallas, where the CFP is headquartered, and the national championship game.
Brock’s journey from Washington to college football’s premiere event is an interesting one. She excelled in track at Wash High and had one of the best performances in PIAA history when she won four gold medals in 1996 and became the first female to sweep the three sprints – the 100-, 200- and 400-meter dashes – at the state meet. She also anchored the Prexies’ winning 400 relay team. Brock ran six races in one day and won them all, helping the Wash High to the team title by scoring 40 of the Prexies’ 45 points.
At Penn State, Brock was captain of the Nittany Lions’ track team, a five-time letterwinner and named All-Big Ten. She also competed in the Junior Pan-American Games in Cuba and was inducted into the Washington-Greene County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.
Brock graduated from Penn State in 2000 with a degree in media studies and earned a master’s in counselor education in 2002. Two years later, she began working with college student-athletes as academic coordinator at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla.
“It was while at Florida Atlantic that I found out that I wanted to get involved in events and operations,” Brock said.
Brock got her break in 2006, when she was hired by the Orange Bowl to be its director of events and team operations. Her work with the Orange Bowl, especially in 2012 when the game was played for the BCS national championship, caught the attention of officials from the College Football Playoff, which replaced the BCS this season.
“I was sitting at my desk at the Orange Bowl, wrapping up things from the national championship game that was played there in January of 2013, when I got a phone call from the chief operating officer of the College Football Playoff,” Brock recalled. “He asked if I would like to work on their team and would I consider moving to North Texas. I said absolutely.”
So Brock moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area and spent 17 months planning for the three games played earlier this month. She said many things she learned during her days as a student-athlete at Wash High translate to her job.
“Both running track and working for an operation this big are hard work,” Brock said. “There are lessons that I learned from my coaches at Wash High, Coach (Guy) Montecalvo and Coach (Tom) Stock, and my coaches at Penn State that keep me level-headed and keep me progressing.
“I miss Washington so much. I don’t get back there very often, but when I do, I love visting my favorite restaurants and seeing my friends. I miss it.”