Afternoon Kickoff 7/22
For once, we have good news on the BCS front. According to CBSSports.com, the BCS successfully lobbied the AFCA to delay its decision to keep the coaches' final vote confidential.
The coaches poll is already a pretty terrible way of ranking college football teams, for several reasons.
1) Coaches rarely see any teams play besides themselves, their opponents and their opponents' opponents on film. Most admit to as much.
2) Many head coaches just give their vote to some assistant or person in the athletic department.
3) There is a massive conflict of interest involved. Anyone would be naive to think coaches aren't influenced by the conference they play in and personal relationships when voting, and who could blame them? It's in their best interests to make their conference and their own team look stronger.
By making the final vote public, we at least get some kind of transparency. The CBSSports story says the BCS could threaten to take the coaches' poll out of the BCS formula, meaning it would likely replace it with some kind of equally bad poll -- like the Harris Poll.
From USA Today in May:
AFCA executive director Grant Teaff said the change is part of the process of "making our poll the best poll it can possibly be." The adjustments were made based on the results of a three-month independent study by Gallup World Poll of the voter selection process and voting procedures. Gallup recommended the change because confidentiality leads to a better poll, according to Teaff. "Why do you have booths for people to vote in?" he said.
Yeah, confidentiality does lead to a better poll... if there aren't huge conflicts of interests involved in a poll that provides 1/3 of the input for the national title game. I just can't see the logic here. By making votes public, wouldn't coaches be much more likely to avoid giving questionable votes to their buddy or their fellow conference member?
Well, not that they avoid it even when votes are public. But it at least opens them up to criticism.
ESPN.com gave a nice overview of questionable ballots at the end of last season.
Some other quotes of note from CBS:
On delaying the confidential vote until the new TV contract starts:
"We just felt that we should wait until the next cycle starts," the AFCA's Todd Bell said. "I can't speak to the outside pressure or anything like that."
Coming to ESPN in 2010-11: The BCS, more corrupt than when it was on FOX!
And the Ol' Ball Coach on why the vote should be public:
"Now," South Carolina's Steve Spurrier told CBSSports.com in May. "There's a chance for some real hanky panky."
If this guy's predictions miraculously came true one year, I can't imagine the "hanky panky" that will ensue in the coaches' poll.
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Quick hits:
-Yesterday, I mentioned that it wouldn't be surprising at all if the SEC and ESPN collaborated on a network. A few hours later, the SEC and ESPN announced they were collaborating on a new network. I was hoping the ESPN ticker would say something like "SEC and ESPN announce new network, as first reported randomly predicted by The Daily Collegian's Footblog."
-BYU coach Bronco Mendenhall isn't too fond of preseason polls. And that's one way the Harris Poll gets it right -- it's part of the BCS formula, so it doesn't produce a poll until a few weeks into the season. Preseason polls have too much of an effect on the rest of the season even though voters are just making guesses. With that said, I still love preseason polls just because what else is there to do in the offseason except make predictions?
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Video of the Day:
Former Penn State defensive tackle Anthony Adams tells a story about racing Joe Paterno:
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