BCS's new poll won't start until after season begins

NEW YORK (AP) - Bowl Championship Series officials have wanted to do away with preseason college football polls for a while.

In recent years, they've asked the coaches to consider waiting until after games are played to begin ranking the top 25 teams. They made a similar proposal to The Associated Press, which coordinates the media poll.

Neither of the sport's two major polls made the switch.

Given the chance to create a new poll, the BCS got its way.

Called the Harris Interactive College Football Poll, it will rank the top 25 teams on a weekly basis, starting Sept. 25 - four weeks into the season. Plans call for 114 voters, and the panel will be comprised of former coaches, players and administrators, plus media members. Potential panelists were provided by the BCS.

``In terms of the human polls that have been part of this system, we always felt that preseason polls are a weakness of the human polls in a sense that it is important to see the results of games played in that season before it is best to conduct a ranking of teams,'' BCS coordinator and Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg said Monday during a conference call.

The season's first BCS standings will be released Oct. 17.

Critics of preseason polls say highly touted teams get an unfair headstart in the rankings.

Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville said the preseason rankings put his team at a disadvantage last year as it was trying to catch Southern California and Oklahoma in the BCS standings because the Tigers had too much ground to make up before games were even played.

``This allows for some games to be played in the current season rather than allow teams to be ranked purely on preseason expectations,'' Weiberg said.

Auburn, which began the 2004 season ranked in the teens in the polls, went unbeaten but never could pass the Trojans or Sooners, who were Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in the preseason.

All three teams finished the regular season unbeaten, and USC and Oklahoma played for the national title in the Orange Bowl. Auburn went to the Sugar Bowl, finished the season 13-0 and had to settle for a final ranking of No. 2 in the polls behind national champion USC.

The new poll replaces the AP poll, which the BCS had used in its formula for ranking teams since 1998. Last season, however, the AP told the BCS it could no longer use its media poll.

The AP preseason poll will be released Aug. 20, with the first regular-season poll Sept. 6. The AP national champion will be crowned after the Rose Bowl on Jan. 4.

In addition to the new poll, the BCS will continue to use the USA Today coaches' poll and a compilation of six computer rankings - each counting for one-third of a team's grade. The coaches will continue with a preseason ballot.

Recently, ESPN pulled out of participating in the coaches poll.

The coaches agreed to have their final ballots made public for the first time this season. The new Harris poll will take the same approach, releasing only the final ballots.

``We thought it was important for there to be consistency with the two human polls,'' Weiberg said. ``To make the ballots public on a weekly basis during the season, we feel the focus would be on who voted for whom and detract from the games being playing.

``There isn't a gag order on voters to release ballots, but we will make sure all season-ending ballots are released,'' he said.

Last season, the BCS standings emphasized the polls more than ever before and AP voters' ballots, which have never been secret, were scrutinized as three unbeaten teams competed for the top two spots.

When Texas made up late ground on California in the BCS standings last season and grabbed a spot in the Rose Bowl, Cal and Pac-10 officials called for the coaches' votes to be made public.

Harris Interactive Inc., a marketing company hired by the BCS last month to coordinate the new poll, is in the process of compiling a panel from 300 possible participants. Voters' names will be made public and all 11 Division I-A conferences and independent teams will be represented in the panel.

Each conference nominated 27 people to be placed into a pool of possible poll voters, and each conference will have 10 of its nominees in the panel.

``We've made very good progress in terms of people responding affirmatively to wanting to be part of the poll,'' he said.