🏈 Hey, coach, why vote in the Amway Poll when your vote no longer counts?

[BAMANEWSBOT]

What do Nick Saban, Steve Spurrier, Les Miles, Mark Richt, Kevin Sumlin, Gary Pinkel and Bret Bielema have in common? They're the SEC coaches that have a vote this season in theAmway Poll administered by USA Today.

They're the ones to credit or blame for makingAlabama No. 2 and Auburn No. 5 behind No. 1 Florida State in the preseason poll released Thursday.

One question for them and the 55 other coaches with a ballot: Why bother when your vote no longer counts?

You would think Saban especially would now consider it clutter.

In the pre-playoff era, it made sense for a coach to take on the extra hassle - or delegate it to an unfortunate staffer - to turn in a weekly ballot. The last ballot mattered.

The Coaches Poll was part of the BCS formula, and the last ballot helped determine the two teams that would play for the national championship. A vote gave a coach a voice in a decision that could impact his team and his own career.

With the birth of the College Football Playoff, that's no longer the case. The 13-member selection committee will choose and seed the four teams that play in the semifinals with a chance to win the national title.

The rest of us will talk about it until we go hoarse, but the committee members will be the only ones with a voice that matters.

The Coaches Poll now falls into the same category as the Associated Press media poll since the AP wisely opted out of the BCS process. It's a curiosity. It'll generate conversation, but all the hot air will signify nothing.

So why would a coach who already works 25-hour days during the season, who doesn't have a spare moment to break down teams beyond his own and his upcoming opponent, agree to take on a thankless and meaningless task?

Auburn's Gus Malzahn didn't participate in the poll last year when, had things happened differently on Championship Saturday, his vote could've made a difference. He's not bothering this year when it won't.

Is there a chance the selection committee might be influenced by the vote of the coaches? Let's hope not. Their preseason No. 1 team hasn't won a national championship since USC in 2004.

If recent history holds, Alabama should be glad to be the No. 2 team in the preseason poll behind Florida State. Four times in the last nine years, the team the coaches started in the runner-up spot won the national title. Texas did it in 2005, LSU in 2007 and Alabama in both 2011 and 2012.

Saban will have something to say about whether that history repeats itself, but this time, his vote won't.

Continue reading...

 

[CollegeFootballNews.com]

Presumably, Condoleezza and the boys will have access to every possible bit of information, including traditional polls. As we know, there is no mandate as to how they reach the important conclusions. There is a process, but that’s not the same as a plan.

In the late stages of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which preceded the CFP, after the Associated Press (AP) pulled out of participation, the Coaches Poll increased in importance. It may or may not be important to the CFP selection committee, but it will be of interest to college football fans.
.....
The 62 coaches who have a vote in the poll – including Bama’s Nick Saban – awarded 56 first place votes to Florida State. Alabama did not receive a first place vote, but still finished ahead of Oklahoma, which received three firsts. Oregon, Ohio State, and South Carolina all received one first place vote.

The Southeastern Conference had one team in the first four (Alabama) and was joined in the top ten by Auburn and South Carolina. Georgia, LSU, Ole Miss, and Texas A&M were in the second 10. In the “Others Receiving Votes” category, Missouri would have been 26th, Florida 27th, Mississippi State 29th, and Arkansas would have tied for 50th with one point.

Kirk McNair: Bamamag.com

 

[TerryP]

I'm left shaking my head. Not at what could be interpreted as a misogynistic attitude by McNair about Condoleezza Rice, but at a comparison Scarbinsky makes in the first article in this thread.

It's true, the AP poll did opt out of being a part of the BCS. It did so when some said they weren't comfortable being a part of the formula "because of concerns over having their reporters be so closely involved in the process of determining which teams play where."

Then we have the fact that the AP voters had their votes released each week, we had voters in the AP poll making some ridiculous choices, and people started calling them out. We had voters in the AP poll state they were voting they way they did to be offering another opinion; another viewpoint, so to speak, on how teams were ranked. In other words, voters had lost credibility.

What followed was a few years of people stating "the AP poll doesn't matter." It didn't. But now we've got Scarbinsky trying to use that and suggest the coaches poll won't matter?

There's a reason, in my opinion, the committee's rankings aren't going to be released until after the AP and the Coaches poll. In this case, I believe they want to know what the opinions are from the coaches are in terms of which teams are the best in the country.

To suggest, or to even just entertain the notion, the coaches poll won't be considered? Naive.

 

[riz]

Ain't no way the polls won't have an effect on the committee.

 

[252BAMA]

Ain't no way the polls won't have an effect on the committee.

Exactly. And the Coaches Poll still has the crystal!