A different kind of voting scandal

The ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll for men’s college basketball is smaller by one today. Seems Utah coach Rick Majerus had been delegating his voting duties to an assistant, and said assistant had been voting for the Temple Owls, who currently stand at 6-12. According to Majerus, the unnamed assistant was “unaware” of Temple’s poor record this year.

Okay, let’s take a closer look at this. First of all, the guy had Temple at #9 this week. I can understand a throwdown #25 vote, but how can you claim that a team is one of the top ten and not know what their record is? Even worse, this vote wasn’t a one-time thing. Temple had been getting votes since December 23, when they were 3-7. Even more damning, they had been climbing in the polls. That means this guy had voted them higher every week, again without knowing their record.

It’s easy to make fun of the “computer geeks” who rank teams by complicated formulas, but at least they always know how many games each team has won and lost, and against whom. I understand that Majerus had family problems that caused him to delegate his vote in the first place, but frankly if he didn’t have the time for it – even to check what his assistant was doing in his name – he should have asked to be relieved of the duty. Since he didn’t as far as I’m concerned he should never be burdened with this responsibility again.

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