Posted 6/1/2005 7:33 PM
By 
Inside USA TODAY is an occasional column designed to give readers a better understanding of the newspaper and its operations. Today: Sports Managing Editor Monte Lorell on polling and the BCS.
Few things in the world of sports are as controversial, or as fluid, as the Bowl Championship Series.
The latest change — a monumental one — is the decision by the college football coaches who vote in the USA TODAY/ESPN Coaches' Poll to reveal their final regular-season ballots. Those ballots help determine which schools will play for the national championship and in the other BCS bowls.
That decision was the product of heated controversy toward the end of last season. The spark: Three unbeaten teams were vying for the two spots in the Orange Bowl title game, and Texas rose past California in both the coaches' and writers' polls for a berth in the Rose Bowl.
The suspicion was that a secret vote shielded the 62 members of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) who vote in the survey administered by USA TODAY. Did nameless coaches shift their voting to favor a team or conference?
No. That didn't happen.
Since taking over the poll in 1991, USA TODAY has compiled the votes and monitored each ballot to guard against unusual swings in the rankings. The survey belongs to the coaches; we help guarantee its integrity and speak regularly with the AFCA to resolve any issues.
Still, USA TODAY felt that transparency in the voting process was needed. So did the AFCA. For that matter, so did the BCS, which weighed results of the coaches' poll, the Associated Press writers' poll and a combination of several computer rankings to determine who would play in the four major bowl games. Each year since it began in 1998, the BCS has been dogged by controversy and has tweaked its formula in response.
This controversy, however, prompted two changes: The AP withdrew its poll from the BCS process (although the poll still will be conducted), and in a vote of all Division I coaches begun in January, the coaches agreed to disclose the panel's final ballots. Each final ballot ranking a coach's Top 25 teams will appear in USA TODAY and on our Web site, usatoday.com.
As a result, our readers can trust the poll as an accurate reflection of the college landscape based on the expertise of the coaches who vote.
With the change, though, coaches are exposed to criticism, to opposing teams using ballots as "bulletin board" motivation, and to complaints that a team or conference might be getting a shade more preference than it deserves. But it also means an honest, open and defensible ballot, one that may be argued as passionately as any other sports topic, but one whose integrity is sound.
This isn't the first time the issue of secrecy has come up. Until 1998, the coaches insisted on keeping secret the names of those on the voting panel. Their reasons reflected some of the concerns the writers still face, such as fans lobbying for higher rankings for their schools.
Even so, USA TODAY urged the AFCA to disclose the names of voting coaches, and the panel make-up is now published along with the pre-season and postseason polls. It is also published on our Web site.
Our readers are avid college sports fans, and our involvement in the poll provides them with the scope of coaches' opinions in addition to our coverage of football.
Controversy is part of the game and likely will be for years to come. The coaches declined to reveal their weekly ballots from the entire season, reasoning that only the final ballot is relevant to selection of the No. 1 and No. 2 teams.
Several coaches are still wary of the new procedure. Texas coach Mack Brown, who initially opposed divulging ballots, last week told USA TODAY, "It can put coaches in a difficult situation, but the coaches' poll has always played such an important role in college football that I believe it's our responsibility to continue to be a part of it."
That holds true for USA TODAY as well. We will continue to tally the votes, monitor each ballot carefully and help maintain the integrity of the coaches' poll.
And await the next controversy.
