The coaches’ poll: a joke that isn’t particularly funny.

While I certainly don’t think it’s perfect, I can live with the BCS per se. But I’ve had a longstanding problem with the conflict of interest that’s apparent in the coaches’ poll. What’s happened this week does nothing to lessen my convictions about that.

Here’s how things played out today:

• Teams that won and moved up in the rankings: LSU, Oklahoma, Southern California, Arizona State.
• Teams that won and maintained the same ranking: Virginia Tech, Hawaii, Brigham Young.
• Teams that didn’t play and moved up in the rankings: Ohio State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Clemson, Texas, Virginia, Boise State, Cincinnati, Arkansas, South Florida.
• Teams that didn’t play and maintained the same ranking: Georgia, Auburn.
• Teams that didn’t play and fell in the rankings: Kansas, Florida.
• Teams that lost and fell in the rankings: Missouri, West Virginia, Boston College, Tennessee.

Other than seeing every Big Ten team move up in the rankings – even though none of them played – there is little rhyme or reason to these changes. I’m particularly amused by Virginia and Auburn being tied in the rankings last week, neither playing a game this week and having Virginia move up one step in the rankings ahead of Auburn this week despite that.

Blame it on sloth, conflicts, stupidity, bias, whatever. The results aren’t pretty.

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UPDATE: Tommy Tuberville must think Hawaii is a helluva team.