Alternative title:
Even a Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day
Back in November when it was announced that Fox had gotten the rights to all the BCS games except the Rose Bowl, I speculated that ESPN would no longer be complicit in the backing the BCS system. In fact they might really start going after it.
Last week, ESPN pulled its backing from the Coaches Poll, suddenly citing the lack of transparency in the voting as the reason. Dennis Dodd at Sportsline doesn’t buy it.
ESPN ripping its name from the coaches’ poll smacked more of grandstanding than ethics. ABC (parent company of ESPN) loses three-fourths of the BCS beginning in 2006. It retains only the Rose Bowl. The move can be interpreted as a much hyped exit strategy. Why would the Worldwide Leader want its name attached to a system that is now three-fourths Fox’s? And where was ESPN two years ago when the coaches who were previously voting USC No. 1 were forced to vote for LSU (per American Football Coaches Association) in their final poll?
Is it any wonder that the BCS has hired an outside group (PDF) to help them put together a new polling group. Anything to avoid a playoff or to have openness.
Steve Richardson, executive director of the Football Writers Association of America, sees this Harris plan as a panic move by the BCS.
“I think they’re up against it,” he said. “They don’t know which way to turn. They’re desperate.”
Richardson said he knows several media members who have been approached about voting in the Harris poll. He also said his membership has wrangled with the subject, both on an individual basis, and collectively regarding the 16-voter college football poll it does being included in BCS calculations.
“They (BCS) should go to the committee system, like in basketball,” Richardson said. “Put a selection committee together and use polls and computers and RPI like college basketball and it would be no problem. But they don’t seem to want to do that. They seem hung up on the poll deal. It comes back to accountability. They point the finger at someone else and they’re off the hook.”
It’s going to be a rough year for the BCS and college football power-brokers.
