Major college football coach leaves Georgia, Vanderbilt off of final Top 25 ballot – Sports Illustrated

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The wisdom of a college football poll is that contradictory opinions merge together to form something approaching consensus. One coach likes a team a little more, the next maybe a little less. But nothing less than complete oversight can explain what happened with one power conference head coach in his final coaches' poll vote of the season.
12-2 Georgia finished No. 5 in the final coaches' poll voting. The Bulldogs' only losses of the season were a three-point loss to Alabama in Septemeber and a five-point loss to Ole Miss in the College Football Playoff's second round. The Bulldogs actually beat both of those teams in the course of the season, Ole Miss in the regular season and Alabama in the SEC championship game. Of course, both of those teams also reached the College Football Playoff.
But Wisconsin coach Luke Fickell didn't list the Bulldogs anywhere in his top 25– making him definitely the only coach of the 62 coaches' poll voters to omit Georgia. In fact, nobody else had the Bulldogs ranked below seventh.
Wisconsin assistant athletic director Patrick Herb told the Athens Banner-Herald that the omission was "just an oversight", and that Fickell intended to list Georgia sixth. USA Today personnel indicated that FIckell's vote was called in by voice mail from a Wisconsin staff member.
But if one mistake happens, a second is more troubling. Fickell also omitted Vanderbilt from his top 25. 10-3 Vanderbilt's only losses were to Alabama, Texas, and Iowa in its bowl game, the latter's No. 17 rank being the lowest of the three at the time of the loss. The Commodores were 15th overall, and only Fickell and Oregon coach Dan Lanning placed Vanderbilt outside the top 20 (Lanning voted Vanderbilt 25th).
No explanation was forthcoming on the Vanderbilt slight, but while it won't raise quite as many eyebrows as the Georgia omission, it would seem to suggest something of an SEC vendetta for Fickell. On the other hand, Fickell placed Tennessee 20th, and the Vols, with just 22 total points, were 32nd overall in the voting.
Delaware coach Ryan Carty left Ohio State out of his top 25, which is reportedly also an ommission. Suffice it to say, it won't go down as a banner year for poll voters. AP poll voter Haley Sawyer drew scorn earlier in the season for a ballot that seemingly made no sense. Sawyer rated Florida No. 14 and South Florida unranked– on the week that South Florida upset the Gators. Unpopular as computer rankings are, maybe the computers are staying ahead of the human voters.
Joe is a journalist and writer who covers college and professional sports. He has written or co-written over a dozen sports books, including several regional best sellers. His last book, A Fine Team Man, is about Jackie Robinson and the lives he changed. Joe has been a guest on MLB Network, the Paul Finebaum show and numerous other television and radio shows. He has been inside MLB dugouts, covered bowl games and conference tournaments with Saturday Down South and still loves telling the stories of sports past and present.
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