USA Today has a nice summary of the coaches voting here, and after a quick review here are some observations.
As one would expect, Oregon is #1 or #2 on all of the ballots, but perhaps surprisingly, Auburn isn't! Robb Akey (Idaho), Mike Locksley (New Mexico), and Kyle Whittingham (Utah) have them #3, but only one of those has TCU #1 ahead of them. So these coaches perhaps have bias towards TCU and against Auburn, but not so much to blindly put TCU ahead of Oregon.
TCU gets the one first place vote, but is as low as #6 (!) on Ron Zook's (Illinois) ballot. He apparently buys into the little sisters of the poor theory that the Ohio State president does. Dan Mullen (Mississippi State) and Gary Pinkel (Missouri) have TCU at #5. Who do these three put ahead of TCU? Zook predictably has Wisky, tOSU, and Michigan State ahead, Gary Pinkel has Wisky and tOSU, and Dan Mullen has Wisky and Stanford.
Wisconsin is pretty consistently voted but Jim Harbaugh (Stanford) has them #8 (!) behind Stanford, OU, VaTech, and tOSU. This seems like a pretty severe case of bias and trying to make sure Stanford was #4 in the BCS to get the auto-bid. To be fair though, Nick Saban (Alabama) also had Wisky #7 behind Stanford, tOSU, and Michigan State.
Boise State probably has the most variation with votes from #7 all the to #16. Who voted them #16? Interestingly Mike Locksley did putting a host of teams ahead of them including VaTech 6(!) spots ahead plus other multi-loss teams Arkansas, OU, Missouri, Texas A&M, LSU, and OkState. Hard to understand that one.
What do you think?
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