The Coaches Poll Needs to Go

Today we were given the opportunity to see how the Coaches voted in the final USA Today Coaches Poll for College Football (USA TODAY/Coaches' Poll Results). The conclusion that I drew from looking at the results was this, the Coaches Poll needs to die. I've felt this way for some time but finally seeing how the "coaches" (some if not all most likely have their assistants vote for them) voted was the final straw.

The first reason that I have is that the coaches cannot be expected to know who is the best team when they spend a majority of their Saturday worrying about their own team. You can't fully expect for Jim Tressel to know if TCU is better than Texas when he's worrying about getting his team ready to play against Northwestern. This is clearly seen through the voting as many schools after the top 2 don't have a consistent ranking. Look at Virginia Tech for example they come in anywhere from 7th to 17th in the final poll, clearly the coaches don't know how the team actually plays and relies solely on the final scores.

The next reason that I have is that coaches are going to vote also based on loyalties they have to their own school or previous schools that they coached at. Take Tim Brewster for example, he used to be an assistant at Texas and his son is a safety for the Longhorns, so when you see that he has Texas ranked #1 you have to ask yourself does he really think Texas is the best team in the nation or is he putting them there because he is friends with Mack Brown and the other coaches in Austin? Brian Kelly was the only coach in the nation to vote his Cincinnati Bearcats #1; I'm not saying he shouldn't have voted them #1, but the integrity of the poll has to be questioned when the results are made public like these.

That same argument can work in the sense that I'm sure there are coaches who have biases against other schools or coaches and will look to take it out on them in the polls. When you have grown men acting like children you have a problem, but when they're acting like children with something that effects who is going to be playing for the National Championship game you have a bigger problem.

The Coaches Poll is a good idea in theory and one could argue that they could keep it around, but there are just too many problems with it to justify using it to help decide the BCS Standings.

I also want to announce that I will not be posting anything for the next couple of weeks so I can focus on finals but I'll be back over Winter Break.