Sports media and coaches alike often mention the term ‘cannibalizing’ when discussing the SEC’s overall strength this season, a product of as many as eight teams in the national polls at any given time beating up on one another each and every week.

Condoleeza Rice, the former U.S. Secretary of State and one of the 13 members of the inaugural College Football Playoff committee, is using a slightly different term to describe the balance of power in college football — fratricide.

Fra-what?

“It’s actually a term from my military study background, which means when you kill your own forces,” Rice said in a recent interview with ESPN.com’s Heather Dinich. “Sorry, that’s what I do. So what it means is how much intraconference is going on. In some conferences, teams are constantly knocking each other off. … It’s two ways to look at conference strength: How much is going on within the conference, and then when you have nonconference games, what happens?

“That’s all to get some ways to look at strength of schedule, to look at comparisons given that we don’t have that much head-to-head. Obviously head-to-head matters a lot.”

According to ESPN, Rice says she watches as many as 15 games a week (live on Saturday, taped on Sunday). A graduate school professor at Stanford, Rice attends home games, but watches others on her iPad.

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Like fellow committee member Barry Alvarez, Rice says she looks at AP and coaches polls, but will not use them as a basis for own vote when the first College Football Playoff rankings drop on Oct. 28.

“I look at them, but I’m not focused on them,” Rice said told ESPN. “It seems to me that when we get ready to rank, we’re going to want to set aside preconceptions and what others have said. I don’t want to have that in my head when I go in.”