Angel | Ivy media poll needs clarity

Penn Football went 4-6 last year. It graduated a sort-of starting quarterback, its running back, fullback and two best wide receivers, plus three starting linemen. (This is just the offense.)

And yet, somewhere between New Hampshire and New Jersey, someone out there knows how Penn can win the Ivy League. I would love to interview this person, but I will never get the chance. Or will I?

Such is the mystery of the preseason media poll. Harvard and Yale are co-favorites, but scroll down a little, and look right next to Penn - see that little "(1)" there? Penn got a first-place vote.

No team has been more frequently and heavily overrated. Over the past five years, Penn's averaged a finish more than two spots below the prediction (largely due to untenable expectations and botched field goals.)

This year, people are wising up. Penn was picked a reasonable fourth. Harvard and Yale garnered all the first-place votes, except for one.

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The media are entitled to have their votes kept private. But I'm surprised that the Ivy League refuses to disclose a simple list of the voters, as is standard among polls like the AP Top 25. (Isn't the purpose of the poll to generate publicity?) Ivy League spokesman Scottie Rodgers would only say that each school's Sports Information Director hand-picks two media outlets.

That fact alone proves nothing. But it hardly inspires confidence in the objectivity of the voters chosen.

Ivies in true college towns have at least one no-brainer pick for a poll voter, because they have independent local newspapers that cover them rigorously. (Dartmouth has the Valley News, Cornell the Ithaca Journal and so on.)

Penn's options are murkier. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News aren't optimal choices; they run brief game recaps but little else. Schools like Columbia face a similar problem (although not really, since at least 13 of 17 voters picked Norries Wilson's men to finish last).

Yet the professional "media" that truly cover Penn are controlled by the University. They include Brian Seltzer of the marketing department, author of syrupy-sweet live blogs of spring practice, and Hench Murray, a dyed-in-the-wool Penn man and the analysis half of its hand-picked radio team. Both have obvious conflicts of interest.

So do many student newspapers, which is why I'd never argue that a vote should lie with The Daily Pennsylvanian or its Ivy counterparts. (The Columbia Spectator gets one, for example.)

To be clear, I don't deny that someone could conceivably argue that Penn will win the league. Bias is impossible to prove, and the evidence for it is mostly circumstantial.

But in a way, that's the point. The secrecy creates suspicion, when transparency could easily squash it. If the KGB wasn't guarding the list of voters, I might honestly believe that one of them really thinks Robert Irvin can throw for 2500 yards with a gimpy arm.

Why introduce any doubt?

Sebastien Angel is a senior Political Science major from Worcester, Mass., and is former Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is angelsd@dailypennsylvanian.com.

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