Beginning in 2010, ballots in the final regular-season USA Today coaches’ college football poll will be kept confidential — one of a handful of changes on tap for the poll that helps decide who plays in the BCS national championship game.

The American Football Coaches Association had asked Gallup to study its poll and recommend how to make it more accurate and credible. The AFCA’s board heard the results in early May and announced them Wednesday in Waco, Texas.
Gallup recommendations being considered for the future include reducing the number of teams ranked from 25 to 10 or 15, and evaluating the merit of a preseason poll.
Starting this year, the poll will also eliminate bonus voters given to some conferences based on how their teams did the previous year.
The most radical change, however, will to be to return to the policy in place before 2005, when coaches didn’t have to reveal their final ballots. Coaches will be allowed to release their own ballots if they choose.
Revealing the ballots has made for some awkward situations. Former Florida coaches Steve Spurrier (now at South Carolina) and Ron Zook (Illinois), for instance, took some heat last year when they ranked the Gators second behind Oklahoma in last year’s final regular-season poll.
Zook, meanwhile, got lambasted two years previously when he picked the Gators as No. 1 over Ohio State, which is in the Big Ten with Illinois.
Zook said whether the poll is confidential or not, his method remains the same.
“To me, I was always going to vote how I felt,” he said. “I think that’s why you have a poll. That’s why more than one person is involved. So what I try to do is rank the teams where I really feel they should be. I’m not real into the political stuff.”
The AFCA also decided to continue allowing coaches to vote for their own teams and to select voters on a random basis beginning this year.