Silliness abounds

My buddy Andy Staples of SI.com is in the midst of a noble pursuit. He's filed public records requests to require all of the coaches working at public institutions to reveal their ballots in the USA Today football coaches poll. The coaches association has told schools they can refuse the request, but most are having their legal department check it out. To their credit, USF went ahead and posted Jim Leavitt's ballot on their website. It's a perfect example of why the coaches poll has to be done away with. Leavitt has Oklahoma at number one, possibly as a nod to his former K-State colleague Bob Stoops, but that's not the big issue. He has his team at number 18, one of four Big East teams he put on the ballot. FSU, an early season opponent for the Bulls, is number ten. Does anyone want to make the case that this vote is based on a true ranking of the best 25 teams as opposed to what would be best for Jim Leavitt's personal agenda? I doubt it. So why should this kind of thinking have any role in the BCS process?

When I read Tim Cowlishaw's Dallas Morning News column with his ideas to fix the BCS, I was pretty sure it would be the stupidest thing I saw this week. Cowlishaw wants a BCS rule that teams which lose bowls shouldn't be allowed to be ranked in the next year's preseason top ten. Ignoring the fact the BCS doesn't control the polls, exactly how does that make any sense? Everyone agrees Oklahoma's one of the four best teams coming into this season - why should voters not have been allowed to put them higher than eleventh as a result of a loss the year before to the team they're voting number one? It's a completely inane suggestion by Cowlishaw. Then Vito Stellino of the Florida Times-Union came along and topped him with a piece about Tim Tebow's possible impact on ticket sales in Jacksonville. Stellino doesn't believe Tebow becoming a Jaguar would make a noteworthy difference at the box office. I disagree, but that's not the problem. Stellino then says if Jacksonville gets the Senior Bowl, that will prove whether fans would buy tickets to see Tebow...

"If Tebow plays and the game isn't a sellout, that would reduce the pressure on the Jaguars to draft him."

Let me get this straight, Vito. Unless fans SELL OUT an NFL tryout game in a gigantic stadium knowing that Tebow will only play around a third to a half of one team's plays, that proves they won't spend money to come see Tebow play in real NFL games for their hometown team? Without knowing what Jacksonville did for the Senior Bowl in a non Tebow year, there will be no way to measure the impact he had on the game's ticket sales numbers. Whether Tebow can change the Jaguars box office results or not, we sure won't get the answer from the Senior Bowl.

Halfway through the preseason, Tampa Bay coach Raheem Morris has still not named a starting quarterback. It doesn't really matter whether it's Byron Leftwich or Luke McCown, because neither one is going to be anything more than fodder until the Bucs are ready to begin first rounder Josh Freeman's era under center. How little does Tampa Bay think of their top two "contenders" for the starting job? Acording to the NFL Network, “They’re looking for someone to make the (starting quarterback) decision for them” by trading for one of the guys. They'd be lucky to get a sixth rounder for either one. Rebuilding isn't fun - it's going to be a really long year for Bucs fans.

Still not appearing on Ohio State's football schedule: Florida. Appearing as the focus of a Columbus Dispatch sports column for the second time in five days: Florida. The guy shorts UF a basketball title while claiming they've replaced Michigan as the focus of fulltime Buckeye hatred. It's pretty amusing how obsessed they are up there, considering they've got very little shot of seeing the Gators again anytime soon.