Rolling Stone could teach BCS thing or two
Posted on Monday, November 17, 2008
Aretha Franklin is the greatest singer of all time.
So it says in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. Ray Charles is the second-best singer of all time, and Elvis is third.
The top 10 includes John Lennon, Bob Dylan and James Brown. Johnny Cash, meanwhile, didn’t crack the top 20, and neither did Etta James or Patsy Cline.
This is probably the point at which you’re wondering what in the name of Sam Cooke (No. 4, by the way ) any of this has to do with sports. Let me explain.
Rolling Stone compiles and releases these kinds of lists all the time. Open the mailbox any day of the year, and you just might find a ranking of anything from the greatest song to the greatest guitarist of all time.
Much like the only two college football polls — the USA Today coaches and the Harris Interactive — that matter these days, the lists compiled by Rolling Stone are subjective endeavors. There is no more science in determining what tickles one music lover’s ears, after all, than determining what tickles the fancy of a college football poll voter.
What Rolling Stone has managed to do, however, is put together groups of voters with near-impeccable credentials. Those who run the Bowl Championship Series, meanwhile, have failed miserably in this regard.
Perhaps the dirtiest little secret involved in that failure is the inclusion of the coaches in the voting. Major college football coaches simply aren’t equipped with two of the essentials — time and objectivity — to vote responsibly.
Think about it.
How much time do you think the average head coach spends watching a representative range of teams from across the country ? Considering the hours upon hours these coaches spend on the practice field and in meeting rooms, not to mention recruiting or coaching their own games, the safe guess is not much.
And which team do you think, say, a Big 12 coach is going to vote for if his choices are another Big 12 team or one from the Big Ten or Pac 10 ? The answer is he’ll probably make the same choice you’d expect an SEC coach to make if he had the option of voting for a team within his league or one outside of it.
To put it another way, imagine the NCAA Tournament selection committee asking a handful of coaches to help pick which teams get into the Big Dance every year. Ain’t happening.
As for the Harris Poll, which along with the coaches poll and the average of six computer rankings constitute the three elements of the BCS, it is only slightly better.
In the case of Rolling Stone’s singers list, for example, it managed to solicit opinions from a group both young (James Blunt, Lenny Kravitz ) and old (David Crosby, B. B. King ), while also representing a wide range of genres (Brandy, Alice Cooper, Merle Haggard ).
Of the 179 people who voted in Rolling Stone’s most recent list, in fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single name you’d dismiss without hesitation. The collection of “rock luminaries, acclaimed producers and music-industry heavyweights” was put together with obvious attention to detail.
The 114 members of the Harris Poll, conversely, appear to have been thrown together with little rhyme or reason. When the poll began, each of the 11 Division I conferences nominated 30 potential voters, while Notre Dame nominated 9 and Army and Navy a combined 3.
The Harris folks then randomly selected 10 from each conference, three from Notre Dame’s nominations, and one from the Army-Navy list. Seriously.
The result is a good number of names you’d recognize and respect immediately (Gil Brandt, Earle Bruce ) mixed with some that seem just OK (Thurman Thomas, Al Del Greco ). And then are head-scratchers like Denny O’Brien (reporter for Bonesville. net, a Web site devoted to East Carolina sports ) and Ron Stephenson (a former commissioner of the Big Sky Conference ).
In other words, in a season in which Alabama, Texas Tech, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Southern Cal might all end up with legitimate arguments for playing in the BCS championship game, their fates will be decided by voters ranging from Bobby Aillet (played at Louisiana Tech ) to Hugh Yoshida (was athletic director at Hawaii ).
All of it is more than enough to infuriate fans from coast to coast, if not successfully fan the flames for a college football playoff. Consider me one of those fans, because when it comes to the BCS, I feel just like the 16 th-greatest singer of all time.
I can’t get no satisfaction.
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