Votes Show That BCS Now Stands For Bob “Cheater” Stoops

In the spirit of accountability, the voting results of the final USA Today Coaches Poll are made public. This decision to open the voting up to dissection and assessment is aimed toward putting coaches in the spotlight for voting their teams unfairly high or voting other teams unfairly low. Based on the last Coaches Poll of the season, the BCS should now stand for Bob “Cheater” Stoops.

Just so we have our bases covered, here are the 10 BCS teams and their bowl matchups:

Rose Bowl: USC vs. Illinois
Sugar Bowl: Georgia vs. Hawaii
Fiesta Bowl: Oklahoma vs. West Virginia
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. Kansas
BCS Title Game: LSU vs. Ohio State

And here are the final results of the Coaches Poll:

1. Ohio State
2. LSU
3. Oklahoma
4. Georgia
5. VT
6. USC
7. Missouri
8. Kansas
9. West Virginia
10. Hawai’i

Predictably, there were a number of strange items that jumped out at me: Six of the 60 coaches who voted put Ohio State at #3 or lower; seven Big 10 coaches have a vote, and all of them placed the Buckeyes at #1. Mario Cristobal of Florida International and Steve Spurrier of South Carolina were unimpressed with Ohio State’s weak schedule; they voted the Buckeys #6 and #5, respectively. Meanwhile, eleven coaches voted LSU #1, while 29 more had the Tigers at #2.

On an individual basis, Hal Mumme of New Mexico State earns big points from Scooter & Hum for voting Hawai’i #1.

For discussion’s sake, what follows is how the BCS coaches voted*:

#1 Ohio State. Jim Tressel’s Top 5: #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 USC, #4Oklahoma, #5 Virginia Tech
Notable others: Georgia at #6

#2 LSU. Les Miles’s Top 5: #1 LSU, #2 Ohio State, #3 Georgia, #4 Virginia Tech, #5 Oklahoma
Notable others: Missouri at #11

#3 Oklahoma. Bob Stoops’s Top 5: #1 Oklahoma, #2 Ohio State, #3 Missouri, #4 Kansas, #5 Virginia Tech
Notable others: LSU at #6, Georgia at #8

#4 Georgia. Mark Richt’s Top 5: #1 Ohio State, #2 Georgia, #3 LSU, #4 Oklahoma, #5 Missouri
Notable others: Virginia Tech at #8

#5 Virginia Tech. Frank Beamer’s Top 5: #1 LSU, #2 Virginia Tech, #3 Oklahoma, #4 Ohio State, #5 USC
Notable others: Georgia at #6

#9 West Virginia. Rich Rodriguez’s Top 5: #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 Georgia, #4 Virginia Tech, #5 Oklahoma
Notable others: Missouri at #10

#13 Illinois. Ron Zook’s Top 5: #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 Oklahoma, #4 USC, #5 Georgia
Notable others: Kansas at #11

For local flavor, here is how a couple of the Triangle schools voted:

NC State. Tom O’Brien’s Top 5: #1 Ohio State, #2 LSU, #3 Oklahoma, #4 Virginia Tech, #5 USC
Notable others: Georgia at #7

UNC. Butch Davis’s Top 5: #1 LSU, #2 USC, #3 Ohio State, #4 Virginia Tech, #5 Georgia
Notable others: Oklahoma at #6

Obviously, Stoops is the biggest transgressor if you’re being kind, and the biggest jackass if you’re being truthful. Somehow, he managed to put three Big 12 teams in the top four, while dropping the top SEC teams, LSU and Georgia, to #6 and #8 respectively. To try to balance the jackassery, Florida State’s Bobby Bowden voted Stoops’s Sooners at #10, while his son Tommy of Clemson placed Oklahoma at #7.

The final results show that, when there is nothing to be personally gained for their specific team, coaches tend to vote along conference lines. In addition, the votes show that some coaches still don’t understand that they’ll be called on the carpet for illogical, irrational stupid votes.

* Editor’s Note: USC’s Pete Carroll, Kansas’s Mark Mangino and Hawai’i’s June Jones do not have a vote in the poll. Neither does Missouri’s Gary Pinkel, whose team got almost unbelievably screwed.