Toney Baker, and half-baked polls
Ragsdale's Toney Baker may be the most acclaimed high school football player from our area in a long time. From a records standpoint, maybe the most acclaimed of all time. He should have the nation's second-highest reported total of career rushing yards when Coach Tommy Norwood submits his figures to the National Federation of High School Associations.
Anyway, check out our Sports front page on Friday. We're breaking our traditional news-and-feature presentation mold a little bit by offering a full-color poster page as a tribute to Baker's career. Let us know what you think. ...
The issue regarding college football polls isn't dying down. ESPN, one of the sponsors of college football's controversial coaches' poll, plans to ask the American Football Coaches Association to make currently anonymous ballots public in future seasons.
As editor John Robinson has pointed out, the News & Record will consider its position, certainly before the 2005 football season. I'm in some agreement with my former Daily Tar Heel colleague Mike Persinger that the basketball polls really don't matter; they're just for conversation. But that'll be up to new sports editor Joe Sirera and the rest of the team to resolve. And we'd value your thoughts about that, too.
A key question, whether it's writers or coaches (or sports information directors), and whether the poll means big BCS money or simply water-cooler chatter, is who sees all of the teams play. And who can properly evaluate that "this team is ninth-best, and this one, they're only 17th-best"? The answer: Not many.
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