College Sports

I’m a firm believer that pre-season polls are junk. Not even worth the cyberspace they are emailed through. I think this point was driven home at the SEC meetings when Tim Tebow wasn’t a unanimous All-SEC pick. Nope, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier voted for Jevon Snead of Ole Miss. But Wait! Spurrier didn’t actually vote himself! Nope, he handed that duty off to one of his minions.

And that, my friends, is the dirty little (not so) secret of sports balloting, especially coaches polls. They, for the most part, don’t vote. Nope, they pass off that honor to an administrative assistant, grad student, or the sports information office.

When I worked in sports information, I voted for Top 25’s in virtually every sport, despite the fact I was not particularly well-versed in every team in the nation in, oh, croquet. Since most polls come out on Monday, the scene usually played out like this:

(SUNDAY NIGHT, DINNER TIME. TELEPHONE RINGS)

Me: Hello?

Coach: Hey, lowly SID. I need you to phone in my ballot.

Me: Ok. What’s your top 25.

Coach: Heck, I don’t care. Just make sure you don’t put State U. anywhere in the top 15.

Me: But aren’t they undefeated?

Coach: I don’t care, I have to recruit against them. And I hate their coach’s hair color.

Me: Anything else?

Coach: Naw, just make sure to put us in there somewhere.

Me: But we haven’t won a game!

Coach: Yeah, but if we receive a vote, it gets us in the paper.

I wish I was making this up. Really, I do. But this is how it goes at virtually every school. So excuse me if I don’t really care who is voted where in whatever poll. Frankly, I’ll just let them battle it out on the field and into the playoffs.

(Oh yeah, forgot there is no playoff in D-1A. Guess those SID/administrative assistant/grad student ballots really matter!)

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