Throughout the 14-year history of the Bowl Championship Series, the USA TODAY coaches poll has been a topic of much debate. Should coaches, who have a horse in the race, have a significant say, and vote, on what teams compete in the national title game? The lack of transparency ? the coaches' ballots remain confidential until their final vote? has also been an issue.
Now that the conference commissioners who oversee the BCS have endorsed a four-team playoff with a selection committee expected to choose those teams, the coaches poll presumably will return to what it was in the pre-BCS era: a separately recognized entity.
"We serve strictly at the request of the commissioners and if they want to do something else that's certainly their prerogative and that's fine," American Football Coaches Association executive director Grant Teaff told USA TODAY Sports on Thursday. The AFCA has run the poll since 1950; USA TODAY has administered the poll since 1991.
Teaff said he does not know if the poll will be used by a committee as part of its selection process. "We have not been consulted by the commissioners so I have no idea," Teaff said.
BCS executive director Bill Hancock said Thursday the issue has been discussed only very informally and "will get a full airing" after the presidents' oversight committee finalize the new format next week during meetings in Washington, D.C.
College football has historically relied on polls. But the AFCA's longtime director doesn't sound sorry that the BCS is saying goodbye.
"This isn't something that we have happily done," said Teaff, referring to the poll being part of the BCS formula the previous 14 years. "We've done it because the commissioners wanted us to and the coaches wanted to be part of the selection process and that's the only reason we've done it. There's no other reason."
Use of a selection committee would mirror basketball's, where a panel of commissioners and athletics directors fills and seeds a 68-team bracket. The football committee would be charged with picking the nation's four best, most deserving teams, giving strong weight to conference championships, two commissioners told USA TODAY Sports.
Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said a new postseason format shouldn't employ any set of rankings that establishes a team pecking order before or even early in a season ? in other words, one that starts in the preseason.
"At the end of the year, you shouldn't be looking at a ranking system whose initial starting point was a ranking that had no basis in the competitive world," Delany said. "That's a rationality issue. The transparency issue is: What are the guts of it? If it's people, who voted and how did they vote? If it's a computer, what are the factors and how are they weighted?
"I think we've been able to work our way through that with the NCAA basketball committee, and I think that we should learn a lesson from them."
Contributing: Steve Wieberg
Source: http://rssfeeds.usatoday.com/~r/UsatodaycomSports-TopStories/~3/gWheV2uBNIs/1
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