ESPN wants coaches’ ballots in open

Thursday, Dec. 16, 2004 | 9:39 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

ESPN, one of the sponsors of college football's controversial coaches poll, plans to ask the American Football Coaches Association to make currently anonymous ballots public in future seasons.

Vince Doria, the network's vice president and director of news, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday that ESPN intends to raise the issue with the AFCA after the season.

"We greatly prefer transparency with the ballot," Doria said. "Our plan is to have conversations with the coaches in the offseason to try and make that happen."

ESPN isn't contractually tied to the coaches poll like its media partner, USA Today, which administers the poll and gathers coaches' votes by phone mail every Sunday. The 61 coaching panelists voted recently by a 32-29 margin not to disclose their final ballot, AFCA executive director Grant Teaff said.

The poll has come into question after four coaches dropped California in their final ballots, knocking the Golden Bears out of the big-bucks Bowl Championship Series, sending Texas to the Rose Bowl and provoking Cal coach Jeff Tedford to call for ballots to be made public.

Tedford and Wyoming's Joe Glenn on Wednesday complied with an Atlanta Journal-Constitution open records request for the 61 coaches' ballots, joining Washington State's Bill Doba, who released his ballot Monday. All three coaches had USC No. 1 and different No. 2 picks -- Tedford had Auburn, Glenn had Utah, Doba had Oklahoma.

Orgeron had been at USC since 1998 and also served as the Trojans' recruiting coordinator and associate head coach. He will remain with USC through the Orange Bowl, then depart for Mississippi.