NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Are big changes coming to the main entity that legitimizes the BCS?
The Division I-A head coaches voted Tuesday to continue awarding its national championship trophy to the winner of the BCS title game for at least one more season. The coaches voted "unanimously" at a Tuesday morning meeting during the American Football Coaches Association national convention here at the Opryland Hotel.
However, by one estimate, only 60 to 70 of the 120 I-A coaches were in the room. Three of the four coaches of teams generally regarded to have a national title claim in 2008 apparently were in attendance -- Florida's Urban Meyer, Texas' Mack Brown and Utah's Kyle Whittingham. USC coach Pete Carroll did not attend.
|
|
| Utah's Kyle Whittingham was at the AFCA convention. (AP) |
The coaches poll has been the backbone of BCS legitimacy since the AFCA partnered with the BCS in 1998 to recognize the winner of the BCS title game as its national champion.
The tweaking could come in the form of coaches once again hiding their ballots, according to AFCA executive director Grant Teaff. In recent years, the 61 voting coaches have been making their final ballots public after the regular season. Teaff said he has been receiving input that a closed vote would be more "accurate."
Teaff also said the coaches are considering reducing the number of voters in the name of "fairness". That would be done, he said, to balance the input from each I-A conference.
Teaff said he would set up a task force to study the issues.
There was some rancor with the poll this season when Utah was undefeated, yet had no chance to finish No. 1 in the coaches poll because the BCS standings had selected Florida and Oklahoma for the championship game.
USC and Texas each finished with one loss and also made claims for No. 1 consideration. Utah's Whittingham voted his team No. 1, in defiance of the coaches poll procedure. He became the fourth coach to break ranks with his No. 1 vote since the BCS started. Three coaches voted for USC in 2003, the season in which the Trojans went into the bowls No. 1 in both major polls then won its bowl game. However, LSU was declared the BCS champion after beating Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.
The voting coaches are instructed to vote only for teams two through 25 on their final ballot. Teaff said sources at the Gallup polling service told him that going back to hiding the ballots throughout the season would make coaches more likely to vote prudently. In other words, not penalize or reward a team based on a friendship or conflict with a coach.
"We've been told flat-out that an open poll is not near as accurate as a closed poll," Teaff said.
Even though he went against procedure, Whittingham's vote did count in the final point totals for the poll. It was strange, though, that his own peers voted the nation's only undefeated team fourth while the Associated Press media poll finished the season with Utah at No. 2.
"I'm not totally OK with it," Teaff said of Whittingham's vote. "But as I said ... from an enthusiastic head coach's standpoint, public relations standpoint and dealing with your own kids it's a natural instinct. I'm not upset about it. None of our coaches seem to be upset about it.
"It's not like if you don't (vote that way), we're going to shoot you."
Asked what could be done to make the system fairer, Whittingham said: "I don't have the exact answer to that. I just know that we felt disappointed this year because we thought we could play with anybody. The system is what it is."
Whittingham was not penalized for voting his team No. 1. He also was named the AFCA's I-A Coach of the Year on Tuesday. Up until becoming head coach four years ago, Whittingham was not an AFCA member meaning he would not have been able to win the association's award, voted in its poll or voted his team No. 1.
It's not unusual for there to be such a low turnout for the I-A meeting. And the vote to continue the BCS relationship was considered routine. The Fox deal with the BCS runs through the 2010 bowls. After that, the new ESPN deal takes over.
"Next year if the coaches want to change it, we'll change it. It's strictly their (coaches) call," Teaff said of the poll.
But for the first time it is believed that some small protest to the system is coming from the rank and file. Teaff, entering his 15th year as AFCA executive director, has steadfastly argued in favor of the coaches poll recognizing the BCS title game winner and thus legitimizing the BCS.
Teaff was asked if the BCS could exist if both the AP and coaches polls were independent. In other words, play the championship game, give the glass ball to the winner, declare it BCS champion but still allow both polls the flexibility to pick their own champions.
"There's a heck of a lot wrong with that," Teaff said.
Why?
"They (coaches) want to be part of a national championship," Teaff said.
But they have been since the coaches poll started in the early 1950s. Only a handful of times in the wire service poll era have there been split national champions. It has happened twice in the last eight years -- 1997 and 2003.
"If the coaches didn't want to have their poll as a part of it, they'd (BCS) come up with another poll," Teaff said. "It's not what works for us, it's what works for the BCS. Our coaches think it's important that we have a say in who is selected."
