AP Pollsters Have A Chance To Make A Statement:

The folks who vote in The Associated Press Top 25 poll have a chance later this week to shake up Division I college football.

They can demonstrate that the game still belongs to the coaches, the players, the alumni and the fans – not to ESPN, ABC, Fox or the people who run the bowls and the Bowl Championship Series.

They can make a statement about what’s fair and what’s right.

And maybe, just maybe, they can provide the kick in the pants that finally forces big-time college football to move to a playoff system.

They can do all of that with one first-place vote – if they have the guts to cast it.

They can vote Utah No. 1.

Sometime early Friday morning, at the conclusion of the BCS “national championship” game between Florida and Oklahoma, the AP voters will select the final Top 25 of the 2008 season. That poll will crown the AP’s national champion.

The coaches who participate in the USA Today poll are expected to vote the winner of the so-called title game as national champion, but AP pollsters have no such obligations. They can crown a different national champion. 

It’s happened once since 1998, when the BCS began its run. That was in 2003, when the coaches crowned LSU after it won the title game but AP gave its trophy to Southern Cal. Both teams had one loss, but USC was left out in a three-way race among itself, LSU and Oklahoma for the BCS game.

If it happens again this season, AP voters might go with either USC, which has one loss and pummeled Penn State in the Rose Bowl, or Texas, which will have just one loss, too, if it beats Ohio State Monday night in the Fiesta Bowl.

But if I still voted in the AP poll – I did from 1993-2003 – I wouldn’t have to wait to see what happens in the Fiesta Bowl or in the BCS game. I saw enough in the Sugar Bowl, where Utah beat up on an Alabama team that carried both polls’ No. 1 ranking for much of the regular season.

The Utes have a body of work that rates a share of the national championship.

First and most important, Utah is the only undefeated team in Division I football. That means it’s the only team that took care of all of its business.

No lobbying is needed, as USC Pete Carroll is doing in the wake of the Rose Bowl. No whining, as Texas coach Mack Brown is likely to do if his team wins in the Fiesta Bowl.

Utah is the only team in big-time college football that passed all of its tests in the only place that’s supposed to matter: on the football field.

The top programs out of the lightly regarded Western conferences have demonstrated they can hold their own in BCS games. Utah won the 2005 Fiesta Bowl, and Boise State won it two years later.

But, while it’s tempting to dismiss as luck what those teams accomplished – Utah defeated Pitt, and Boise State outlasted Oklahoma – there is no way to minimize what the Utes just did in the Sugar Bowl.

Utah didn’t just hang with the big boys, it dominated one of them.

“What else do we have to prove?” Utah quarterback Brian Johnson said after the game. “Without question, we’re one of best, if not the best team in the country.”

When asked if his team deserved to be ranked No. 1, Utah coach Kyle Whittingham said much the same thing in his post-game remarks.

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t deserve that consideration,” he said. “Somebody has to explain to me why they wouldn’t. There is only one undefeated team in the United States of America right now in Division I football, and it’s these guys right here.”

Maybe it was because of the emotion of the moment, but Whittingham, who votes in the coaches’ poll, said immediately after the game that he was prepared to buck the system for the sake of his team.

“I know where I’m voting us,” he said. “I’m voting us No. 1. End of story.”

Maybe, if AP voters do the same thing, it won’t be.

JIM CNOCKAERT is the Herald Courier sports editor. He can be reached at and at (276) 645-2572.