The American Football Coaches Association is making a number of changes to the USA Today coaches’ poll, which factors into the BCS formula. At the top of the list is the confidentiality rules. Coaches will no longer be required to reveal their votes on the final regular-season ballots.

Image: sxc.hu

Before 2005, coaches could keep their votes confidential, but the BCS pushed for the rule change after 2004, when the Rose Bowl bid was questionable. The coaches voted to reveal their final regular-season votes, which have been printed in USA Today.

However, this has caused some awkward situations. Coaches have been criticized for voting against teams in their own conference or picking unpopular choices, and having to reveal their votes has made the entire process more political.

Now, coaches can once again keep their picks a secret. This wasn’t the only rules change, however. Some of the other changes include:

• Eliminating the “bonus voter,” which placed a non-human vote based on the ranking success of a conference’s schools based on the previous season.
• Continuing to allow voters to be selected randomly
• Continuing to allow coaches to vote for their own teams
• Adopting a “round to even” rule for conferences with an odd number of teams (for example, a conference with 11 teams would get 6 votes, not 5 1/2)

The Harris Interactive Poll, which is also a part of the BCS formula, will continue to publish voters’ choices. To read more about the AFCA changes, check out this post.

The poll for this week is:

Which account do you use to log into your system?

1. Administrator (or equivalent)

2. Guest (or equivalent)

3. I don’t know.

4. I don’t care.
 

You will find a widget called “That Damn Poll” in the side bar on the left where you can take this poll. If you wish to vote for any other option, feel free to shout using the comment form below. For the poll, I am not interested in your identity and therefore not logging your IPs. You may vote more than once, for each of the systems you log into: home, workplace, lab servers,… The poll will be open for your votes until 5th Jan, 2008. It takes less than a minute and the more votes I get the better.

Please vote and share the poll with your friends. Thanks in advance.

Number 1, we picked the name for the confessional — correction, you picked the name for the confessional — and it will be…

The IT Confessional

I know, you’re all surprised and excited. I know I am. The second piece to this post is what you’re all want to hear. Who won the contest?

The winner of this particular contest is Kevin Potter for his awesome, “Is that a big or little zero?” story! I will be contacting Kevin (or better yet, if he wants to email me at jesse.middleton at b5media dot com) to get him his KB.

I want to thank everyone who posted and emailed in their stories, they were a great read and many of them will be used to form some, hopefully, entertaining posts at That Damn PC.

Keep checking back for me and sending your stories in.

With the new section of the blog being formed, the “IT Confessional” and the contest where you’re going to win a free, awesome keyboard, I figured I’d open it up to you guys and gals as to what to call the confessional. Please choose an answer from the poll below, add your own or comment and let me know what you’d like to see it called. We’ll be calling on graphic designers next to help us brand this section of the blog.