The Amway Coaches Poll powered by USA TODAY Sports is decided by 65 FBS coaches. These 65 voters are split up relatively evenly between the ten conferences, to avoid potential bias. Not only is there possibly an incentive for coaches to make their opponents look stronger, but familiarity breeds respect, and coaches are generally most familiar with the teams in their own conferences.
Usually, the ballots for the Coaches Poll are kept private. No one knows which coach voted which way. However, in a tradition that came from the BCS, the poll does release the ballot of each coach for the final rankings. USA Today published those ballots, which contain some interesting nuggets.
An important takeaway, though, is that all sseven Big Ten coaches will ballots put Ohio State at No. 1. The Buckeyes received 14 first-place votes in the final poll, and a full half those 14 came from Big Ten coaches. Chris Ash of Rutgers, Jeff Brohm of Purdue, Michigan State’s Mark Dantonio, Ohio State’s own Ryan Day, Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald, Penn State’s James Franklin, and Nebraska’s Scott Frost all put the Buckeyes in the top spot. (Even though Ash was fired partway through the season, his vote isn’t transferred to a different school or coach.)
This is not too unexpected. The trends for years have indicated that teams are slightly overrated (relative to the rest of the poll) by coaches in their own conference–which is why the bias is spread out the way the poll does it. Still, it’s noteworthy that the Big Ten coaches all think that Ohio State is the best in the land, while the vast majority of others had the Buckeyes at No. 2. A few coaches did have Ohio State at No. 3 behind both LSU and Clemson, but no one had the Buckeyes lower. In fact, astonishingly, every single coach (and every single AP voter) had the Oklahoma Sooners at No. 4–not a single voter had them higher or lower.