UCLA is one of the top 25 football teams in the country.
After watching this team all year, try saying that with a
straight face.
Apparently, someone actually thinks the same team that has no
defense, collapsed against Arizona State and has all of zero
quality wins this year is among the nation’s elite.
And it wasn’t even Captain Helmet, Geoff Strand or towel
guy Ed Kezirian who made this claim.
Someone who knows football well enough to be a Division I coach
thinks UCLA is a top-25 team. UCLA received one vote in this
week’s ESPN/USA Today Top 25 Coaches Poll. And don’t
worry, I checked, Karl Dorrell doesn’t vote in the poll.
So who could this moron be?
Well, unlike the AP, where every writer’s votes can be
scrutinized, the coaches’ poll does not release the votes of
the 61 coaches who take part in the poll. (None of the AP writers
voted for UCLA, probably for fear of being publicly ridiculed.)
The American Football Coaches Association says that the
coaches’ ballots aren’t released because the coaches
don’t need to be subjected to questions about their votes
every week.
This statement makes sense. Can you imagine being a coach
preparing for an impending big game while having to explain why you
ranked Iowa over Boise State?
But we all want to know who the genius is that voted UCLA No.
25.
Could it have been the coach of one of the teams UCLA has beaten
this year?
All four of the teams the Bruins beat are awful this year and
could probably use a morale boost. They’d probably all like
to say, “At least we lost to a good team.”
Of the four coaches that have lost to UCLA this year, only
Illinois coach Ron Turner and Arizona coach Mike Stoops vote in the
poll.
Stoops is respected for his football intelligence, having been
the defensive coordinator at powerhouse Oklahoma. He’s only
in his first year at Arizona, so he can’t be too depressed
yet. So I doubt it was him. He knows what a good defense looks
like. He even knows what a defense that can tackle looks like. UCLA
doesn’t look like that.
So who else could’ve voted UCLA in the top 25?
I know it wasn’t that devil across town Pete Carroll
because he didn’t vote this year. It would be the kind of
thing for him to do, though ““ pump up the Bruins as much as
possible until his Trojans beat them 70-2.
Two other Pac-10 coaches do vote in the poll: Oregon’s
Mike Bellotti and Washington State’s Bill Doba. Either one
could be trying to help boost the prestige of the conference and
vote UCLA at No. 25. And since they haven’t seen UCLA play
yet, they don’t know how bad the Bruins are.
Arizona State’s Dirk Koetter is the only other Pac-10
coach who votes ““ and he might have voted for the Bruins
because he’s embarrassed his team only beat UCLA by six.
The only other coach who votes who has any direct correlation to
UCLA would be Fresno State’s Pat Hill, who could be trying to
set up the Bruins for another Silicon Valley Classic appearance,
which would mean another guaranteed win for the Bulldogs.
Well, I have to admit, there are some advantages to getting one
vote in the coaches’ poll ““ it makes it possible to
calculate UCLA’s BCS score and ranking. And of course, I did.
The Bruins’ score is .0002. Compare that to USC’s
.9843. (The lowest score possible is 0 and the highest possible
score is 1.) That would give the Bruins a BCS rank of about
41st.
41st. Well, at least that’s more believable than the top
25.
E-mail Quionez at gquiñonez@media.ucla.edu