A Modest Proposal for The USA Today Coaches Poll and America

In America we love our democracy. It’s government for the people as it’s decided on by the people.

However, lately I’ve been wondering if perhaps asking everyone in America to vote is really worth the hassle. Let’s be honest, most people either don’t put much thought into who they want to elect or just don’t bother to vote at all.

So I’ve been wondering if we should condense the system down and put the responsibility into the hands of those who are most knowledgeable about government—the politicians themselves.

Sounds like a great idea right? Here’s what I’m thinking:

Clearly, the party in power has to be a cut above the rest, because they’re the ones who managed to get elected. So, it would only make sense that we should divide up their votes proportionally to how many seats they hold in Congress. Since the Democrats are in power, let’s give them around 60 percent of the vote. Then, because the Republicans are a close second right now, we’ll give them the remaining 40 percent.

As for all those third parties, well, they don’t really need any voting rights. I mean, some of those guys have some potential, but really I don’t think they test themselves rigorously enough. Sure, some of these guys can just annihilate their third-party colleagues in debates and such, but surely they wouldn’t be able to hang with the guys in the major parties if given the chance.

This seems like a perfect system to me. And don’t try to tell me, “Well those biased jerks will just vote for their own people!” That’s just silly. When deciding on the future of our country, I’m sure our responsible politicians can be objective.

I mean, hey, it works for college football’s Coaches Poll right?

Right?!

The USA Today Coaches Poll works in more or less the same way. We give the coaches (the most knowledgeable people) the voting rights, divide it up by what conferences they represent (with a 57.6 percent majority representing BCS conferences) and then trust them to be objective and not simply vote for their own colleagues.

Take last year for example.

The regular season concluded with five undefeated teams, and of course we got the right two for the championship game with Alabama and Texas. The little guys like Boise State and TCU had wonderful seasons in their own right, but it goes without saying that neither of those squads could have taken down a real member of the BCS elite.

To be sure, that simply could never happen.  

It’s better that we just give them their own bowl games and let them play each other, that way, they wouldn’t have to suffer an embarrassing trouncing at the hands of any of the BCS schools. Just like you wouldn’t rightly throw a third-party politician into a real election, because they just aren’t ready for that kind of stage.

Clearly if TCU, Boise, or even Cincinnati had been deserving of a chance to play in the national title game, they would have received more support from the BCS coaches. Those guys are the experts and they know best.

Only six coaches considered TCU to be a worthy opponent for Alabama in the championship game, and not one of those coaches represented a BCS school!

It’s clear that while the BCS coaches can be depended on for objectivity, the lower-level coaches have trouble setting aside their own biases. If there’s one flaw with the Coaches Poll, it might be that it’s not vote on entirely by coaches from the six major conferences. In fact, perhaps they should eliminate the Big East as well since it’s clearly lagging far behind the other elite leagues.

As it stands now though, the Big East already has less influence than the other BCS leagues (and rightly so!), with only four representatives contributing to the poll compared to the six that most of the other major conferences get.

Some might say that we should spread the wealth and give every conference an equal chance, including the little guys. They might also say that this poll and the BCS formula which it is included in are set up to keep the powers-that-be sitting atop their thrones.

But you know what, that line of thinking leads straight to socialism if you ask me!

The Coaches Poll is truly an enlightened system for determining the correct pecking order in the society of college football. I hope sports fans will forgive my brief detour into politics, but I just can’t contain my admiration for this poll and I believe that government would work much better if it operated in the same way.

In case it's unclear, this was an attempt at satire.