Which College Football Coach Voted Tennessee No. 1?
By Ty Duffy
It’s August. It’s preseason poll season. The coaches have weighed in with USA Today’s Amway Coaches Poll. Alabama, winners of four of the past seven national titles, is No. 1 with 55 1st place votes. No surprise there. Clemson is second with seven 1st place votes. Oklahoma, Florida State, and Ohio State round out the top five.
The Tennessee Volunteers are down at No. 10, but they did get one outlying first place vote. The natural presumption: Butch Jones is bullish about his team this year. But, Butch Jones is not on the list of 64 coaches participating. The individual ballots are secret until the final one, which still doesn’t count.
It could be anybody. Who wasn’t impressed by Tennessee’s regular season wins over…the Georgia team that ran Mark Richt out of town by one score and the South Carolina team that made Steve Spurrier quit football by a field goal? Not to mention the “culture.” We’ll hope it was Nick Saban swooping in with some early mind games and résumé building.
Perhaps the second biggest mystery is who gave Indiana a Top 25 vote. Hoosiers head coach Kevin Wilson is on the list of participants.