Vanderbilt's James Franklin Disgraces Notre Dame in USA Today Coaches Poll

James Franklin showed Notre Dame the ultimate sign of disrespect by voting the Irish No. 4 in the latest USA Today Coaches' Poll.

Across the board, most coaches voted for Notre Dame as the No. 1 team in the land, with the exception of Rick Stockhill, Tommy Tuberville and Franklin.

Stockhill and Tuberville voted Notre Dame as the second best team in the land, behind Alabama. Franklin, on the other hand, put Alabama, Georgia and Florida ahead of the Irish. Tell us how you really feel, Franklin.

The sense of SEC pride is admirable, coach, but umm, Georgia? If you're going to make a case for anybody, Alabama makes the most sense because it has only lost one close game and is the defending national champion.

A case can be made for Florida, as well, because the Gators did beat a good Florida State team, along with LSU and Texas A&M. But even putting the Gators over Notre Dame should be considered a stretch.

But Georgia? This is a team that just lost the SEC championship, a team that has two losses on its record. Compare that with Notre Dame's unblemished record, and it's easy to say that what Franklin did is biased and unfair.

Look, we get it. The SEC is the best conference in football. Anyone with a brain will agree with that, but disregarding what Notre Dame has done and putting three SEC teams with losses ahead of it is downright irresponsible as a voter.

Franklin, being a coach, should know how difficult it is to go undefeated, and furthermore, he should be ashamed of what he did.

No one can deny that Franklin has done a tremendous job at Vanderbilt, bringing them to back-to-back bowl appearances in his first two seasons as head coach. He's brought life to a football program that really never had a chance in the SEC.

But his vote in the latest coaches' poll illustrates that Franklin, or any coach, should not be voting on the top teams in the country.

All of these teams have too much at stake for biased voting such as this to occur.

The coaches' poll been debated time and time again, and hopefully Franklin's outlandish vote for Notre Dame will cause a movement toward getting rid of the poll.