Monday, December 08, 2008

Coaches Final Top 25 Ballots Out: How Did Mack Brown, Mike Leach, Urban Meyer Vote?

Want to see the individual Coaches' Top 25 ballots? It's fascinating to see the conference rivalries and loyalties -- and conflicts-of-interest -- revealed so transparently. You can play with this for a hour. I spent 3 minutes:

*Mack Brown: Florida 1, Texas 2, Okla 3. (Like me!)

*Urban Meyer voted Florida No. 1 and Oklahoma No. 2, with Texas at No. 4 behind Alabama.

*Ranking Texas No. 1: Iowa St's Chizik, North Texas' Dodge, UCLA's Neuheisel, UTEP's Price.

*Who ranked Texas 5th? Mike Leach. Guess he more than anyone else has a claim. (Leach ranked Texas Tech No. 2, behind Oklahoma.)

*Florida ranked no lower than 3rd, but ranked 3rd by most of the Big 12 coaches -- and Jim Tressel. (Still bitter, eh, Coach SweaterVest?)

*Oklahoma had one ballot putting them out of the Top 3 -- Neuheisel had them 4th. Ouch.

*Northwestern's highest ranking: 16th, by Urban Meyer(!), Rich Rodriguez and Joe Tiller.

There is so much more here -- I don't have time to look deeply into how coaches voted for their own teams -- outside of the biggies like Leach and Brown.

First one to find the most interesting individual ballot detail wins... I don't know... something.

-- D.S.

17 comments:

ryan said...

i liked gary pinkel slotting utah, boise state, and tcu at 15, 16, and 17. you go to hell non-BCS conferences!

Unknown said...

Willingham REALLY like Mizzou, no?

Unknown said...

Ty Willingham REALLY liked Mizzou, huh? That seemed to be the biggest outlier.

And speaking of Mizzou, I guess Gary Pinkel doesn't respect the non-BCS teams that much.

Anonymous said...

The only "interesting" thing I can see is that Gary Pinkel wins the Billy Packer Curmudgeon Award. Seriously, Boise AND Utah in the teens?

I hope I win ... something.

Anonymous said...

*Also TCU.

What's with this guy?

John Thompson said...

Only two coaches had Texas Tech ahead of Texas: Mike Leach and Hal Mumme.

The Professor said...

Not an outlier, in fact just the opposite...

Rick Stockstill of Middle Tenn had the predicted the top 18 exactly.

Steve Kragthorpe of Lousiville was a close second nailing the top 17.

Neil Callaway of UAB was close also, only having 8/9 switched in the top 18.

The Professor said...

the biggest difference between ballot and final ranking (one team) is Willingham who had Missouri (#23 in final) at #11 on his poll.

Patt Hill of Fresno St left the most top 25 teams (in final ranking) off his final poll: 4

Hill also had the highest ranked team in final poll that was left off his ballot entirely: #16 BYU

hutlock said...

About the most interesting thing I found was Spurrier ranking Ball State all the way up #14. This is an interesting tool though.

Dan Shanoff said...

Emailed to me from reader R.B.:

#1. Chris Peterson and Kyle Whittingham need to get some balls. Their players should be pissed off they didn't rank their teams higher. When a 4 or 8 team playoff is discussed, I don't like how people dismiss Utah and Boise State. But if their own head coach doesn't think they are a top team, how can anyone?

#2. I love that Mike Leach voted Texas Tech #2. Also liked that Urban Meyer voted Utah #5 and Ole Miss #11.

#3. Gary Pinkel is a prick for voting Utah #15 and Boise State #16.

#4 Tyrone Willingham haivng Missouri #11 seems pretty random.

Joe said...

Mack Brown and Jim Tressel both ranked Rice in their top 25 (at #24 and #25, respectively).

Dan Shanoff said...

Follow-up about that Spurrier comment above:

How about the fact he ranked Florida No. 2? Only SEC coach to do that.

http://sauriansagacity.blogspot.com/2008/12/really.html

Unknown said...

Most interesting subplot....how overrated is the SEC?

Does anyone remember when the SEC was the deepest, and had the most feared teams in the nation?

LSU - overrated, Auburn - not even bowl eligible, Georgia - certainly not the #1 team in the country, Tennessee - laughable.

Come on, Mississippi and Vandy finished 2nd and 3rd in their respective divisions.

Now consider the SEC went 7-30 against the AP top 25.

Can you imagine the hate that would have come from this column if the big ten had under achieved half of this amount?

ryan said...

@matt

um, being that the SEC only lost 11 games out of conference (3 to current AP25 teams), i'm assuming your "30" number comes from...SEC teams losing to other SEC teams who are in the top 25? you're right, that's a scathing indictment of the conference.

Brett said...

Dan and other commenters:

Just so you know actual coaches like Ty Willingham, Urban Meyer, Gary Pinkel, etc. do not do the voting for the most part. It is usually given to assistants to do. So when saying Gary Pinkel slotted so and so here, say Missouri because it most likely was not Pinkel. There was an article in the USA Today about this a few years ago.

The Professor said...

"So when saying Gary Pinkel slotted so and so here, say Missouri because it most likely was not Pinkel."

Um, no thanks. It is their name. If they are worried about who gets the credit/blame, then they should either fill out the ballots themselves or DON'T VOTE.

That is their problem if they are delegating something that they should be doing themselves.

Unknown said...

@ Ryan

How many W's do they have outside of the SEC against the top 25? 1? Just Florida over Florida St, right?

You are right...that is pretty convincing....