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Friday, October 19, 2007

Readers skewer Doughty over Associated Press ballot

Hokies set sights on two more wideouts

By Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.

Find his College Notebook from The Roanoke Times in Thursday's college sports section

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As if it isn’t bad enough catching flak from derelicts like Greg Roberts and Randy King, I now have become the subject of scorn from coast to coast.

At issue are the rankings that I submit each week for The Associated Press’ list of the top 25 college football teams.

For the record, Virginia Tech was 14th on my ballot this week and Virginia was 24th. It was the first time Virginia had made my ballot.

Tech ended up 11th in the poll and Virginia did not make the Top 25, although the Cavaliers were second among teams that also received votes.

It wouldn’t make any sense to keep my votes secret, particularly because all ballots are available to the public. I don’t know where to locate them, but e-mailer Don Charles did.

“Your privilege to cast a vote in the AP College Poll should be taken seriously as is in part a measure of how unbiased a journalist you are,” Charles wrote.

“Voting ASU at 7 and Oregon at 13? I am a Sun Devils fan and would love to see them in a BCS Bowl, but not this way. USC at 6 makes obvious sense, too.

“All the best in your trek through the fuzzy world of journalism.”

I CAN’T REMEMBER the last time I voted on football poll but I’ve always considered it a privilege.

The AP can’t pay people to do the basketball poll, which is why I’ve been a basketball voter so often. It simply doesn’t mean anything, given that there’s a playoff system in places for basketball, but it makes me pay attention to who’s doing what.

At one time, voters on the AP football poll determined the national champion or at least the co-champion. I remember, at least once, watching the season’s final game while preparing a ballot for submission 10 minutes after the final whistle.

Now, the AP poll no longer is part of the BCS formula, but I appreciate the invitation to vote, if only for the same reason that I agree to do the basketball poll when asked. It forces me to be better informed.

I do the football poll the same way I would do the basketball poll. On Sunday mornings, I look at all the conference standings and lump teams by fewest losses. This past weekend, I had lists of teams with zero losses, teams with one loss and two-loss teams that play big-time schedule and are starting to gain steam.

Michigan fit that category this past week.

Actually, this past weekend, I got home early enough to start the process Saturday night. As the list of undefeated teams dwindled, one team remained unaccounted for: Arizona State.

The first score I saw showed the Sun Devils trailing Washington 17-10 in the second part. From that point on, Arizona State outscored the Huskies 34-3, including 31-3 in the second half.

I could not have told you who Arizona State (7-0) had played to that point, but the Huskies had caught my attention one week earlier in a 27-24 to former No. 1 Southern Cal. Washington, despite its 2-4 record and four consecutive losses, is still the only team to beat Boise State.

Previously, Arizona State’s best wins had come over a pair of 4-3 teams, Oregon State and Colorado. The Sun Devils have games coming up with California next week and at Oregon the next week, so we should know about them soon enough.

THE COACHES GET knocked in their poll for allowing the voting to be done by sports information directors, assistant coaches and basically anybody they can find to do it.

The coaches know a whole lot more about football than the media, but, think about it: Coaches and media have the same problem. Unless a team has an open date, how many games is its coach going to watch? If it’s a beat reporter who’s doing the voting for a media poll, how many games is he or she going to see?

Last weekend, I left home for the Virginia-Connecticut game at 11:30 a.m., before the games started, and returned just a little bit before midnight. If I was lucky, I got to see a few highlights on ESPN’s college wrapup.

When I retrieved my Oct. 14 ballot this afternoon and compared it to the actual top 25, I saw that I had USC at No. 6, the same as the poll, and wondered what Charles’ beef was. Then, I realized it was South Carolina at No. 6 in the actual poll and Southern Cal at No. 13.

Did I miss something? Did the Trojans suffer a second loss in addition to their 24-23 home shocker to Stanford the week before. That wasn’t the case. They beat Arizona in Los Angeles, 20-13, in their third straight game decided by seven points or fewer, but who doesn’t have blemishes at this point in the season?

ON THE RECRUITING scene, I’m told that Virginia Tech might take two more wide receivers prospects even though the Hokies already have commitments from five prospective wideouts -- D.J. Coles, Austin Fuller, Derrick McCoy, Dyrell Roberts and Peter Rose.

It looks as if the Hokies are going to make an offer to Randall Dunn, a 6-foot-3, 215-pound wide receiver from Ocean Lakes High School in Virginia Beach. Virginia, UConn and Division I-AA newcomer Old Dominion have made scholarship offers to Dunn, who reportedly has caught 10 touchdown passes in the first seven games.

The Hokies made an earlier offer to Dunn’s teammate, Marcus Davis, who is the Ocean Lakes’ quarterback. Dunn and Davis have not said they will go to the same school, but the Hokies will afford them that opportunity. Coles and possibly one of the other commitments are possibilities for prep school, but Tech also has shown the capacity to move wide receivers to outside linebacker or defensive back.

IT WAS INTERESTING to hear Virginia coach Al Groh say in a Thursday teleconference that the Cavaliers are unlikely to add a quarterback to their 2008 recruiting class.

UVa has four scholarship quarterbacks in its program, including Scott Deke, who will be a fifth-year senior if he returns next season, and Marc Verica, who will be a redshirt sophomore. Starter Jameel Sewell will be a junior and backup Peter Lalich a true sophomore.

Deke has taken only two snaps in his career but has a valuable role signaling in plays “and handles it very well,” Groh said. “His game has come along very nicely.”

It was Verica -- and not Deke -- who played with the first offense when Sewell missed UVa’s spring game, but Verica is clearly the No. 4 quarterback and does not travel to all games. Groh said Verica has looked impressive at times while conducting the scout squad but continues to refer to him as a “developmental” player.

“That’s the key word,” Groh said Thursday.

The Cavaliers also have a pair of lanky, walk-on freshman quarterbacks, Brendan Lane and Warner Blunt.

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