Other Campuses: New poll completes BCS

By The Daily Iowan

(CSTV U-WIRE) IOWA CITY, Iowa – Just nine days away from the kickoff of the 2005 college football season, Bowl Championship Series officials announced Monday the panel to the third and final component of this year’s point formula.

The Harris Interactive Poll, composed of 114 former players, coaches, administrators and media members, will take over the vacancy left by The Associated Press poll, which pulled out of the BCS formula following last season.

After contacting more than 300 potential voters, the new poll selected 114 voters at random, hoping to generate a fair and unbiased poll to add in the BCS formula. Two nominees had University of Iowa ties – former coach Hayden Fry and former Athletics Director Bump Elliott, and Elliott was randomly selected to participate in the poll.

He spent nearly 20 years in college football before becoming the Iowa athletics director in 1970. He played running back at Michigan from 1946-47 and later became a Hawkeye assistant coach from 1952-56. Hired as head coach at Michigan in 1959, he won a Big Ten championship in 1964 and retired as coach in 1968.

With plenty of experience and passion for college football, Elliott was excited to hear on Monday that he had been chosen to vote in the Harris Poll this season.

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“They contacted me to see if I was interested in voting in the poll, and I told them I definitely would be,” he said.

“If they are going to have a method that will help the BCS, I am always supportive of that.”

He believed that adding the Harris poll to the BCS formula will help, but is still unsure of whether it is the solution to all of the BCS problems.

“I don’t know necessarily,” Elliott said when asked how much the Harris Poll will improve the system. “This is as close to fair as the system will get, but it will be hard to ever make it perfect.”

The Harris Poll will have eight panelists and two media representatives representing each major conference, hoping to create a fair and broad group of voters.

By getting variance and equal set of voters, each conference will have the same input as the next.

In addition to ties to Iowa and Michigan, Elliott’s son Bobby is the defensive coordinator at Kansas State.

Like last season, the other two components of the BCS formula will be the USA Today coaches’ poll and a set of six computer rankings. The first Harris Poll is scheduled to be released on Sept. 25, during the fourth week of the season. The first BCS poll will be released Oct. 17.

With the season rapidly approaching and the chance to vote in the new poll on his mind, Elliott is ready for the season to get under way.

“I am sure I am going to be more interested in the success of other teams and their performance against certain opponents,” he said.

“I am hopeful I can decide who the best team in the country is, and I look forward to following this season closely.”

-Charlie Kautz