Kyle Whittingham last Friday and then Mack Brown last night, in his wonderful display of showmanship, both declared to gleeful fans that they planned to vote their teams No. 1 on their Coaches' Poll ballots at the end of the week. Hooray for protest and bluster, but otherwise, those votes are completely meaningless.

You probably already know that coaches voting in the USA Today poll are "obligated" to vote the winner of the BCS Championship game No. 1. But then, three coaches broke ranks to vote USC No. 1 over LSU in 2003, didn't they? So what happens in the extremely unlikely event that enough coaches broke ranks in favor of, say, Utah?

"Nothing would happen," according to Grant Teaff, ex-Baylor coach and now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association, which organizes and administers the poll. "We don't vote on No. 1."

Teaff told me coaches can cast a "symbolic" vote for anyone they want, but the poll's fundamental role in the process is to select participants before the nominal title game, not a champion after the game -- the BCS champion is automatically the champion, whether the votes come through in its favor or not: "They will automatically be No. 1 in our poll ... We will vote nos. 2 through 25."

Coaches Brown and Whittingham's simultaneously righteous and self-serving symbolism will be duly noted for posterity. If they want actual hardware that says "National Champion" on it in place of mere self-satisfaction for a season well-played, though, there's only one target: the Associated Press poll. AP voters Brett McMurphy of the Tampa Tribune and the Raleigh News & Observer's J.P. Giglio both write today that they've been bombarded with e-mails from Utah fans pleading the Utes' case for No. 1 in the media poll. The bad news for the Utes: McMurphy and Giglio are two of the four voters who ranked Utah fifth, its highest position on any ballot, and neither one sounds inclined to bite on a jump all the way to No. 1.

Polls or no, the Longhorns and Utes can always just buy rings, hoist banners and call themselves champions. Real championships are won in the heart, anyway, right?