Regular readers may recall the concentrated deluge of righteous derision directed at the Coaches' Poll back in May, when the American Football Coaches Association decided to keep individual coaches' ballots in the dark after this season. That reversed a five-year policy of revealing the final votes of the regular season, the ones that help determine the end-all matchup in the BCS title game, and keyboards briefly ratted beneath the wrath of the truth-seeking scribes of the Web.

Most of the crusaders got their column/post out of it and moved on. Sports Illustrated's Andy Staples, however, recalling the implications of "public" in "public school," huddled with SI's lawyers and decided to get FOIA with it:

So beginning Tuesday, SI.com will file records requests with the employer of each of the 51 public school coaches who vote in the 2009 poll. If the schools comply with the law, we should get a look at every ballot. Legal action may be required if schools refuse to comply, but if a recent case involving Florida State and the NCAA is any indication, judges likely will support the people asking that highly paid public employees be held accountable for their actions. Every ballot we receive will be published.

Hey, viva transparency, etc. I still can't believe anybody cares this much about what's on individual coaches' ballots, as opposed to the fact that there are coaches' ballots in the first place.

In the 11-year BCS era, throughout which the Coaches' Poll has had a major hand in voting teams into the championship game, there's only been one genuine controversy surrounding their collective vote, when they moved No. 2 LSU in front of No. 1 USC after the bowl games in 2003. But that controversy had nothing to do with secret agendas, biases or conspiracies and everything to do with the bogus fiat that requires coaches to vote for the winner of the anointed championship game, regardless of their actual opinion. For a poll that supposedly exists to exploit the expertise of the best football minds in the country, the real controversy is that it prevents them from exercising that judgment on the most important vote of the year. Revealing the ballots won't change that bit of predestination.

There's a good chance that anyone bothering to go through the ballots on a weekly basis will identify some biases and inconsistencies. But the collective results haven't created an avoidable controversy in ages, and if they did, it would still pale next to the scandal of the poll's role in the championship process in the first place. Transparency is fine, as an abstract ideal, but in this case it solves nothing.

More power to them, anyway.