Sports Illustrated to Demand Coaches' Ballots

When college football coaches decided that their little shred of transparency -- making each coach's final ballot public -- was just too much sharing, there was some outcry over the decision to go back to anonymous balloting in 2010. All accountability and openness of the votes appeared to be out the window.

Sports Illustrated has decided that it will go to court to force the ballots to be opened to public scrutiny. Starting this week, they intend to file state-level Freedom of Information Act requests at each public institution where there is a participating coach.
Sports Illustrated's reason for this action according to Andy Staples:

Why are we doing this? Because, as South Carolina coach -- and public school poll voter -- Steve Spurrier so eloquently put it to CBSSports.com after learning the 2010 results would remain cloaked, the looming secrecy allows "a chance for some real hanky-panky." If the AFCA [American Football Coaches Association] learns through this exercise it can't keep the ballots secret, it might choose instead to embrace transparency rather than risk damaging the integrity of the poll.

The basis for the filings are that at each state institution, the coaches are essentially public employees. Many are and do participate in public employee pension systems. The state institutions are generally subject to each states' version of the Freedom of Information Act, and this includes the athletic departments. This will not apply to participating coaches at schools that are private institutions like Duke's David Cutcliffe and Charlie Weis at Notre Dame.

As the article points out, the door to this opened when news organizations in Florida took Florida State and the NCAA to court this year over a records request concerning the NCAA's investigation into the FSU academic fraud case. FSU, while a defendant, actually supported the open records, as did the Florida state attorney general.

The NCAA lost, though they are all appealing. It will be interesting to see how FSU differentiates this view when they get the request for Bobby Bowden's preseason ballot this year.

There's a little bit of turning the tables on institutions here. Again, the article points this out.

In May, the Columbus Dispatch's fantastic investigation into athletic departments' sometimes fraudulent use of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to hide records provided a wake-up call to schools in every state.

Programs shadily employed a federal law to hide when players get in trouble from getting out to the public. Now they appear to be on the other end of the public records law.

Clearly the reason to file the requests now, is to get this into court this year. Get the court challenges out of the way as soon as possible. At a minimum, force the AFCA to repeal their decision for 2010 rather than continually go through this

While this does seem a little silly and not the intent for public records laws, there is a valid claim to be made on making the records public, beyond claims of public interest in the ballots themselves. The Coaches Poll is one-third of the formula used to determine the BCS rankings. Those rankings determine the teams playing for the national championship and in BCS bowls. All of which involve a lot of money that go back to the athletic departments.

Whether or not those various athletic departments receive state monies or are financially self-sufficient is irrelevant. They are still part of the state institution. In other words, the ballots have a financial impact on the state institution. Something for which public records laws were intended.