I get lots of email updates trying to get me to bid on the athletic department's online auctions. The auctions raise money for the athletic department and you can buy autographed stuff and special experiences throught UGA athletics that you can't find other places. We're not alone in this fundraising practice. For the Florida game, LSU auctioned off the "experience of a lifetime" for LSU fans. The package included walking with the team to the game, running through the tunnel, and watching the game with the AD. It sold for over $15,000. A friend asked how much it would cost to call LSU's plays for a quarter? None of UGA's auctions have been that dramatic.
With that background, I was listening to Kirk Herbstreit yesterday on 680 as he was complaining that the Coaches Poll is just an absolute joke. Coaches don't watch games because they have to, you know, work on Saturdays. The SIDs that they hand off their voting duties to just look at the scores in the paper. So, the vote doesn't really reflect reality because the voters are too busy to really watch what they are voting on. It's like picking Miss America based on her application, sight unseen.
Thus, I have a proposal. Explicitly allow the coaches to transfer their voting obligations (which they already do) and then let the athletic departments auction the vote off to the highest bidder. First, this gets the vote into the hands of someone who might actually watch the games. Second, it gets more money to the athletic departments. Third, it could lead to some awesome market manipulation. Boone Pickens and Phil Knight would battle to buy all the ballots. It could even lead to more auctions so that the athletic departments could buy up more ballots.
Quinton
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