hbomber20 said:
Well in my book it's not a national championship and that's all that matters honestly
Well there you go Pip, just tell your wife that in hbomber's book it doesn't count. I'm sure she will be crushed. :chuckles:
Just to set the record straight, the Coaches' Poll has actually been around since 1950:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaches_Poll
I honestly don't remember hearing 1 word about it as a kid, hence I thought it was new. I'm guessing here, but maybe it didn't get as much press until it became the "USA Today Coaches' Poll" in 1991? That's about the time I began to notice it.
At any rate, the Coaches Poll is inherently flawed and is basically a joke. Many fans care more about the Coaches Poll, thinking they (the coaches) have a better idea what's up than the journalists. I understand where this thinking comes from, but it's really not true. This is detailed in Flaw 1, below:
Flaw 1: The coaches don't know what's up, outside of their own schedule.
College football coaches are EXTREMELY busy. During the regular seasont they routinely work 80 weeks. They have to watch tons of film, on their opponants and their own team (self scouting, player evaluation, etc). They have to work on new game plans every week. They have to recruit. They spend alot of time traveling to games, on recruiting trips, and other commitments. And oh yeah, they have to coach their teams (running practice, games, etc). The coaches don't have the time to watch any games other than those of the teams they play. They don't have a clue how good other teams really are, except from when they glance at the AP poll.
Journalists, on the other hand, are paid to watch as much football as possible, and to have a clue what's going on. They're much more likely to have a good idea big picture-wise how the teams should actually rank.
Flaw 2: The coaches are biased.
Sure, everyone has some bias, but journalists jobs aren't riding on the success of their team. The coaches jobs are. As such, their is built in bias to rank your team higher, as well as the teams on your schedule, so as to improve your strength of schedule. Again, their jobs are riding on the success of their program. Gee, that's not a big conflict of interest at all, eh?
Flaw 3: The coaches are forced to accept the winner of the national championship game as their #1.
You may not realize this, but the coaches poll is contractually obligated with the BCS to annoint the winner of the "nation championship game" as their #1. On this surface, this may not seem like a big flaw, and I would agree
IF the coaches poll is what was used to determine who goes to that game. However, it is not. The BCS rankings determine who goes, and they are just a small component of the BCS.
The following example illustrates just how bad this flaw is. Imagine a scenario where after the regular season/prior to the bowls there are no undefeated teams, and 4 one loss teams. The coaches poll has the one loss teams ranked 1 through 4 in the following order: Team A, B, C, and D. However, the BCS has teams C and D (ranked #3 and #4 in the coaches poll) as the #1 and #2, so they play for the title. In the meantime in a different bowl, teams A and B play, and A wins. So the coaches' top two teams played each other in a bowl, and their #1 team, team A, won. Team A should be their choice for national champions, right? Well, no. They're contractually obligated to pick the winner the "national championship game", which would be either C or D.
So for all we know, the coaches would of selected USC as their champion if they had a choice. However, their hands were tied. They didn't choose LSU as their champion. LSU was the default. The coaches had no choice.
After Vick it was the Kevin Jones/Lee Suggs era. A little thunder and lightning power football. Good stuff.
