After all the years Spurrier’s been tossing a bone to the school that gave him his first college head coaching job, folks are finally getting pissy about it?
Said Jim Welch, USA TODAY deputy managing editor for sports: “It’s clear that what once might have seemed quaint has begun to lose its charm. We’re hopeful that before next season the coaches association can prevail upon Coach Spurrier to find another way to salute his former team — or that Duke gets better in a hurry.”
Grant Teaff, executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, whose members vote in the poll, said Thursday that he plans to discuss the vote with Spurrier.
“This has come up over a period of time, and Coach Spurrier has his reason for doing this,” Teaff said. “However, we will discuss this at the appropriate time as we have done with other issues regarding the poll as they come up.”
I’ve long thought that Spurrier trivializing the coaches poll was another reason to do away with it altogether. After all, if he’s not going to take it that seriously, why should we? What’s happened to wake these guys up after all this time?
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UPDATE: The OBC doesn’t get it, either:
Contacted Friday morning by the AJC, Spurrier said he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.
“It’s a vote for a school that has been special to me and my family,” said Spurrier, who won an ACC championship at Duke in 1989. “They hired me when I didn’t have job. I’ve been doing it for about 15 years and all of a sudden they want to make a big deal out of it.”
Get The Picture 
It may not be that he’s trivializing the coach’s poll, but the preseason poll. I wouldn’t think you’d see a problem with that would ya?
The preseason poll doesn’t amount to much in my opinion and honestly if they wanted to start the poll at midseason I’d be fine with it.
But it really would have changed college football if they had done it ten years ago.
It’s pretty simple really, if you have two BCS undefeateds, no matter when they started the poll, every thing is great.
If you have none or one and a whole lot of one loss teams, no matter when you started the poll you’ve got a controversy.
If you have three to four BCS no loss schools, no matter when you started the poll, you’ve got 80% of the fanbase wondering how can’t they see this will continue to happen every now and again and there is a really simple way to fix it.
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kckd, I know you’re fixated on the four team playoff as the magic potion to fix everything that ails college football, but that’s not really what this post’s about.
Why don’t you read my linked post? Spurrier’s rationale for his vote for Florida in the last 2006 regular season poll was a joke. That’s when he should have been called out, IMO.
The horse is way out of the barn at this point.
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Come on. Steve is just willing to say what others do. Some of the coaches are gonna have bias, but who else do you want to poll?
The writers aren’t any less biased. Do you think Ching would have picked us first in the SEC East on his SEC media days ballot if he weren’t covering us?
And what kind of committee are you gonna select to do it? More than likely you’ll want guys who have college football experience in some way. And all of those guys are gonna have some links to universities, coaches etc. who are involved.
So I guess all you are left with is Sagarin’s totally objective computer right?
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You’re being disingenous here. My problem with Spurrier isn’t over his bias, it’s over his flippancy about his vote.
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How was he being flippant about the uf or michigan vote?
He basically said they were even and he voted with UF because he’s a gator.
Does it even matter about the preseason vote?
Your crying on one post here because you think it screws things up and the next you act like every coach should take it very, very seriously.
again, more double talk.
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Ugh, much ado about nothing. He says he does it until the Blue Devils lose. That’s week 1. What do week 1 polls mean?
Senator, did you get my request for you to participate in our blog swap.
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I’m beginning to think I need to annotate my posts. 😉
Look, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:
1. Spurrier’s preseason vote for Duke is a trivial matter.
2. He’s been doing that for a number of years.
3. Given 1 and 2, it’s puzzling why USA Today and Teaff suddenly care about it. (Update – SOS agrees.)
4. What they should have expressed concern over was Spurrier’s behavior with regards to his vote in the last regular season poll of 2006. Anything now strikes me as a day late and a dollar short.
Spurrier’s flippant attitude about the coaches poll isn’t a primary reason why I believe it should be discontinued in its current form, but it does contribute to my feeling about why it should be discontinued.
This isn’t about preseason polls. Nor is it about coaches’ biases. We’re all human beings; we’ve all got ’em. Even the computers – they’re programmed with their designers’ biases. As long as there’s a subjective human element involved, that’s gonna be an issue.
The problem with the coaches poll is that the stakes have changed. Fifteen years ago, I could have cared less about coaches taking the poll lightly. But now, with the BCS formulas, there’s way too much at stake – jobs, money, contracts, etc. Couple that with blatant conflict of interest situations like we saw last year with Tressel abstaining in the final vote (which to my mind is the major problem now) and I believe there’s got to be a better way to account for who gets to play in the big game(s).
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Flippant???
I’d take it more as flippant if he it were two teams he had no relationship with prior and did a coin flip or called the coaches and told them to pick a number.
In your quote it sounded more like he said he voted for UF because he’s a Gator and if they wanted something more than that, well UF had the better record.
I appreciate his honesty. He could’ve said a hundred things, but the truth is it was a situation where you could make a good argument for either and he voted the way he did because of his relationship with the school. Do I think if the rolls were reversed that Spurrier would have voted for Michigan? No. So therefore his answer was good enough for me.
Now, if you want to see something wrong with that poll, look at how Notre Dame was ranked by many coaches. Spurrier had them very low compare to others and stated exactly why. And look what happened when the bowl game was played. Spurrier’s poll looked pretty darn good to me and he at least included every top 15 team. Didn’t some coach forget about Arkansas?
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I think is the favoritism that goes on in the polls. That and the bad blood that is created over time from coaches moving around to other schools.
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