(Photo by Marc Serota/Getty Images)

The American Football College Association (AFCA) decided that transparency in revealing coaches’ voting in its final poll was a mistake. Over the four years coaches’ votes have been publicized, fans have seen a pattern of coaches promoting their own teams, sometimes shamelessly, clear conference bias and some strange votes.  

Rather than dealing with these issues, the AFCA, whose Board members make up those coaches who vote in the poll, jumped at the opportunity to hide its participants’ results.  Like a rotting, barnacled hulk brought to the surface sinking out of sight again, the USA Today Coaches poll will once again become secret in 2010.

"Historically, we have never released the votes," AFCA executive director Grant Teaff said. "When it came up that, OK, it would be better if you did, I think there was acquiescing by the coaches. As to whether it's helped the poll or not, I don't think I can really say. Whether it's hurt it or not, I don't know.”

The Coaches Poll is one of the three components in the BCS and wants to be the only without accountability and visibility of votes.  With millionaire coach’s livelihoods, contract bonuses with performance clauses for themselves and their assistants, and inherent biases, the poll’s credibility has been tested by revealing individual coach’s voting results. 

"The perception is that there's a huge bias, and we've never really found that," Teaff said.

You’re not looking very hard, Grant, at your Board members’ voting. 

Self-Promoting Their Teams

For the 2008 Coaches’ Poll, I found that twelve of the sixty-one AFCA Board members’ teams finished in the top 25. Of those twelve, nine (75%) voted their team one spot or higher. Four (33%) coaches voted their team two spots or higher.  

Frank Beamer was the only coach who voted his team lower (-4 positions) than its final ranking. 

Eliminating Beamer’s uncommon vote, the other eleven coaches voted their team higher at an average of 1.8 spots!! 

Since Florida’s Urban Meyer and Texas’s Mack Brown could not have realistically increased their respective team’s spot by more than one—which they did, the other eight coaches inflated  their team’s ranking by an average of 2.0 spots led by Mike Leach (+6) and Gary Pinkel (+4).    

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