Should Brown Vote
Texas coach Mack Brown has been mulling whether to vote in this season’s ESPN/ USA Today coaches poll. Should he?
A non-vote would protest what many believe is an arbitrary ranking system that, in part, denied Texas a spot in the 2008 Big 12 Conference title game (and, in all probability, the BCS National Championship game) despite wins over North Division winner Missouri and South Division representative Oklahoma. In addition, coaches are asked to rank teams they never see, Brown has said. There is also an inherit bias among coaches to vote for schools where they had been former assistants (for example, former Oklahoma assistants Mike Leach and Mark Magino voted the Sooners ahead of Texas in the final 2008 regular season poll while coaches with Longhorn ties, including Gene Chizik and Todd Dodge, voted Texas No. 1).
“I was concerned about some of the things I’ve seen the last six years,” Brown said this week, “and they popped-up again last year.”
Brown advocates an eight-team playoff but does not expect one in his lifetime. As such, the national title participants will continue to be determined by a subjective vote. The immediate question is whether Brown will continue to participate in it.
“I haven’t made a decision,” Brown said. “I am on the American Football Coaches Association Board of Trustees, and since the American Football Coaches Association are the ones the support the USA Today Coaches Poll, I want to talk to (AFCA president) Grant Teaff before I make a final decision. All of us need to continue to look at what’s best for trying to crown a champion.”
It would follow the decision Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops made last season when he declined to cast a ballot. Stoops was protesting the fact that his Sooners, following another BCS bowl loss, finished behind a Missouri club that it had beat twice in the regular season.
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Following Texas’ comeback win against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, Brown told a national TV audience that he would vote his team No. 1 in the final ballot. He, of course, did not.
Brown insists he was misinformed about the ramifications had he voted Texas No. 1. It was generally understood that the winner of the BCS National Championship game automatically occupies the top spot in the coaches poll and that the panel, in essence, votes for No.2 through No. 25. Brown believed that picking Texas No.1 would have resulted in a non-vote for the Horns. He was also told that his single vote would not have been enough to vault Texas to the national championship following Florida’s win in the BCS title game. It was a surprise, Brown said, when Utah coach Kyle Whittingham’s No.1 vote for his team actually counted in the final tally.
“As a voter, I want to make sure I know all the rules,” Brown said. “I thought I did. I got confused last year on some things that popped-up. I want to make sure that I feel like the system is such that I want to be part of it. If it’s not, then it’s no big deal to anyone other than me and The University of Texas. It’s a decision I will make based on where I feel like we are going.”
