Utah Coach Kyle Whittingham Says He'll Vote the Utes No. 1 -- But Can He?

The winner of Thursday's Oklahoma-Florida game is supposed to be the automatic and unanimous winner of the national championship, as determined by the USA Today coaches' poll. But that might not happen this year.

Texas coach Mack Brown said after beating Ohio State last night that he's voting the Longhorns No. 1, and Utah coach Kyle Whittingham says he'll vote the Utes No. 1. USC coach Pete Carroll has also said he believes his team is the best, although Carroll doesn't have a vote in the coaches' poll.

But while Brown and Whittingham have said they're voting their teams No. 1, it's not clear that they'll be able to. As noted by CFT, the structure of the coaches' poll is such that they're really only counting votes for the teams ranked 2-25. So if Whittingham votes Utah No. 1, his ballot will most likely be tabulated as if he had voted the Oklahoma-Florida winner No. 1 and Utah No. 2.

The bottom line is that when the coaches agreed to this process, they agreed to disenfranchise themselves. If these coaches want to vote for whoever they like, they should have thought of that before agreeing to be a part of this flawed process.