Howdy howdy! Welcome to your Thursday FOIAball. As always, our Thursday newsletter is free to read.
Before we begin, a few readers have recently asked about merchandise. While that wasn’t something I originally envisioned, it’s awesome to hear how much people really like the FOIAball logo.
Especially because, for those who don’t know, my wife designed it! A Mrs. FOIAball original.
And we’ve been working on a hat. I won’t share it yet, which, if you know me, means I’m very excited about it. We went through like 20 mock-ups.
I don’t have all the details ironed out, but I’m trying to use a small business for this and not some dropshipping conglomerate. That means there will be a longer lead time, so I want to get a good idea of the actual demand first. If you are interested in purchasing a Sleuthy the Seal hat, reply to this email with “HAT!” or “hat” or “hat lol.”
If you are an Alumni subscriber, not only will you get first crack at ordering, you’ll also get a discount. That makes today a great time to upgrade!
Please only reply if you really want one. I will get in a lot of trouble if I’m stuck with 100 hats in our apartment.
Now get me to blogs country.
Who had Kansas State over Indiana?
I like to be as honest as possible about the mechanics of this newsletter, so I want you to know my publishing schedule was thrown entirely out of whack these past two weeks.
This story was originally supposed to drop on Friday, as a companion piece to my appearance on Pablo Torre Finds Out, where we prank-called the USA Today Coaches Poll.
But then we started talking Texas boosters. I bumped that and held this, and, you know what, I’m not sure you really care.
On the show, we rang the USA Today Coaches Poll hotline and voted as Charlie Weis. Congrats, again, to Jess Smetana for making history! (And my apologies for misspelling your last name in my story.) But I still had plenty more I wanted to share about that.
Like an actual coach’s real preseason ballot.
The process for the 2026 USA Today Coaches Poll will be starting soon. Each year, in early June, the American Football Coaches Association emails members to ask if they are ready to step up and serve the sport they love.
Is the language of the AFCA’s ask appropriately militaristic enough to entice a coach to join? Absolutely.
And what is the AFCA? I’m glad you asked. It’s a non-profit dedicated to the betterment of college football coaches. I can’t think of a group of people less interested in self-actualization. Aside from organizing the poll, the man in charge gets $1 million a year to promote “fellowship” and “social contact” amongst coaches.
Basically, seven figures to combat a very specific strain of the male loneliness epidemic. Through golf outings, probably.
But declaring your readiness doesn’t mean you’ll make the final cut. The voting body is then chosen at random from the volunteer list, with appropriate representation for each conference.
As befitting the proudly Luddite nature of college football coaches, the process is about as dumbed down as humanly possible in 2026.
Coaches can call in their votes, they can text them, or they can email. They’re given six different numbers to contact if they have issues.
And while you’d think any person capable of managing a football program could count to double digits, coaches are provided with a template each week to make things even easier.
It looks like a grade-school worksheet.
Coaches can have assistants send in their ballots, but they are beholden to a strict honor system when it comes to casting votes.
The welcome materials state, “We would like to emphasize that the credibility of the poll depends on each head coach selecting the teams each week, not anyone else. Therefore, make every effort to keep your votes thoughtful, reasoned, consistent, and fair throughout the season. Also, by participating, you agree to vote in every poll through the end of the playoff. Abstentions will not be permitted.”
No off days, a message a coach can truly respect.
Every Friday, coaches (and their assistants) are emailed a reminder. There isn’t much time after Saturday’s games to make their picks; ballots are typically due Sunday at noon.
So if you think your team didn’t deserve to fall in the rankings one week, rest assured, no one made that decision after eating a bunch of tape.
Oddly, the only poll that isn’t held to a strict standard is the only one that’s made public. For transparency’s sake, USA Today publishes every voter’s final ballot.
But at the same time, it lets them phone that one in, encouraging coaches to vote before the national title game is even played.
“I encourage you to vote early if either Monday night or Tuesday morning will be problematic with your schedule,” an email from the organizers reads. “If you are doing your ballot early, you can leave the first two spots blank and we will fill in with the winner and loser from the game. Or you can stipulate where you want teams based on the possible results.”
Which means a few teams that may have legit claims to second-best in the country might not be getting a fair shake in the polls, the loser of the title game already slotted in.
The Coaches Poll is one of the longest-running college football traditions, in operation since 1950.
And like any august college football tradition, Lane Kiffin has made a mockery of it.
At the start of the 2012 season, Kiffin said that he would not have voted his then-USC Trojans No. 1 after hearing about another coach who did.
In the interest of transparency, and because Kiffin broached the topic, USA Today released his ballot. It turned out he’d lied.
Kiffin tried to justify his comments by claiming he was speaking as a hypothetical coach, and not an actual coach with a vote.
Far as we can tell, Kiffin’s is the only preseason ballot ever revealed.
Until now.
We here at FOIAball think everyone should get to see how coaches think at the beginning of the season. Because it’s easy to forget just how wrong these folks can be.
This year, three teams in the top ten, Penn State, Clemson, and LSU, all lost six games.
Two SEC teams in the top twenty, South Carolina and Florida, went 4-8.
The national title-winning Indiana Hoosiers got just 22 more total points than Kansas State.
I certainly thought Indiana might have been a flash-in-the-pan, but who believed Indiana would be barely as good as the Wildcats? I can tell you one coach put KSU above them to start the season.
Would you like to see their season-opening ballot?
The next week, after Indiana beat ODU and Alabama lost to Florida State, they dropped the Hoosiers to No. 21. And put the Crimson Tide a slot above them!
Any guesses who this might be?
Those are the first two rankings from ECU’s Blake Harrell, whose ballots we obtained.
I’m not gonna say mine would have been better. But luckily, I am not willing to serve.
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Thank you, as always, for reading FOIAball. I’ll see you next week.
