In defense of Lane Kiffin

Very few people in college football are as polarizing as USC's Lane Kiffin. He's much like the Miami Hurricanes of the 1980's - you either love him or hate him. There's no middle ground.

Regardless of how you feel about him, it's time that someone called out USA Today for revealing Lane Kiffin's ballot.

Let's quickly recap what happened. Reporters tell Kiffin that Rich Rodriguez voted USC as the number one team in the land. Kiffin responds: "I would not vote USC No.1, I can tell you that". Shortly afterward, USA Today publishes an article revealing that Kiffin placed the Trojans in top spot on his ballot.

Here's how the publication justified its interference:

"Each coach's vote normally is kept confidential until the final vote of the regular season under an agreement between USA TODAY Sports and the American Football Coaches Association. However, when a voter volunteers false or misleading information about his vote in public, then USA TODAY Sports, in its oversight role as administrator of the poll, will set the record straight to protect the poll's integrity."

This type of unprofessionalism makes me sick.

USA Today is fooling itself if it believes anything that Kiffin did damaged the integrity of its poll. Most of the coaches don't watch all of the games (and rightfully so because they're preparing for the next opponent), making the poll more of a beauty contest than an accurate assessment of a team's merits.

Even if, and that's a big if, Kiffin did provide false information, USA Today could have handled things much differently. If they felt that his comments did not reflect his ballot, they should have made an attempt to qualify his comments or at least place some sort of context around it, rather than writing a "liar, liar pants on fire" article about it.

More importantly, the USA Today Poll now has a credibility problem. As USC's Tim Tessalone pointed out, the poll told its participants that all ballots would remain confidential with the exception of the final poll. Giving this information to a reporter, or to anyone not involved with administration of the poll, breaches that agreement.

It's too bad the people over at USA Today chose to make the news, rather than report the news.