updated 11:41 a.m. ET June 8, 2005

ESPN withdrew from the college football coaches’ poll Tuesday, the second major news organization to say it didn’t want to be a part of the Bowl Championship Series’ weekly rankings.

The cable sports network said it no longer wanted its name attached to the rankings unless all ballots were made public, not just the final ones. USA Today will continue running the poll, which helps determine who plays for the national championship.

In December, The Associated Press told the BCS to stop using its media poll in its weekly formula.

“Coaches have the perfect right to conduct their voting the way they see fit,” said Vince Doria, ESPN’s vice president and director of news. “We just feel, in our best interests here, we couldn’t reconcile having our name on the poll and being able to cover any controversy that might arise.”

Unlike the AP voters, the coaches’ ballots have always been secret. ESPN asked this year that they be public, but the coaches agreed only for the final regular-season poll. Doria said ESPN wanted it for the entire year.

“We just felt that to be as ethical as we possibly could in this situation, that’s what we needed to do,” Doria said. “This wasn’t a case of us questioning the ethics of the coaches or the validity of the voting. These things tend to create controversy. When there is some vetting to be done, it needs to be done thoroughly and we didn’t feel it could be done.”

Doria said ESPN notified USA Today and the coaches’ association of its decision, but not the BCS.

“There will still be a coaches’ poll, and it will be used by the BCS, but we don’t have a comment on ESPN’s decision,” said Bob Burda, spokesman for BCS coordinator Kevin Weiberg.

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