AP and the BCS

So AP has decided that it wants the BCS to stop using the AP poll in the college football championship bowl decisions (story).

Allow me to observe only that AP's poll has been used by the BCS since 1998. Yet AP is only now getting around to complaining and issuing a cease-and-desist letter? That's seven -- SEVEN -- years, folks. You didn't hear AP sqwaking when the publicity was favorable (and I was with AP when this started). But now that the heat is turned up after two inglorious years, AP decides it wants out of the kitchen because the BCS has been using its poll without permission? (And even that's open to some debate, according to the Knight Ridder story: "They've provided their results to us on a voluntary basis,'' Big 12 assistant commissioner Bob Burda said.)

OK, I'll give the new management under Tom Curley the benefit of the doubt. Maybe things were given another look, even if it appears the impetus was that some papers said they'd no longer let their sportswriters vote. I'll say no more and just let Merriam-Webster do my talking for me.

Then, of course, there's the debate about whether sports writers should even vote in a poll. Should they be covering the news, or making it? (See this discussion on Sportsjournalists.com and this Sports Illustrated story that generated it.)

Here's another Sportsjournalists.com thread titled "The AP poll officially is meaningless."