List of BCS voters raises eyebrows

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, the last name of the president of the Association for Women in Sports Media was incorrect in the story on the Bowl Championship Series in yesterday's Sports section. Joanne Gerstner of The Detroit News is the president of AWSM.)

It didn't take long. The new Harris Poll that will be part of the Bowl Championship Series selection process may have hit its first pothole before the season has even begun. Of the 114 voting members announced Monday, none were women. And one of the voters -- on a panel of former coaches, administrators, and media members -- was not identified with any affiliation, and with good reason: He is the son-in-law of Troy football coach Larry Blakeney and, according to Blakeney, who was asked to submit a list of names for consideration, was ''as good a choice as anyone."

According to Harris Poll spokeswoman Nancy Wong, selecting the final 114 voters from a list of more than 300 submitted by the 11 major conferences and Notre Dame was a random process. But once the names were chosen, no one among the Harris people seemed to notice the one-sided gender issue.

The Associated Press, which pulled out of the BCS selection process after last season, has three women among the 67 voters for its football poll. The difference was duly noted elsewhere.

''I'm not happy," said Joanne Gerstner of the Detroit News, who is president of the Association for Women in Sports Media (AWSM). ''I think this is totally unacceptable. The same result keeps happening with different processes. Maybe the process is flawed. This is not the good old days."

USA Today columnist Christine Brennan, the original AWSM president from 1988-90, was equally blunt.

''No women picked? What are the odds of that?" she said. ''It is 2005, not 1975 or 1955. It floors me that these kind of things can still happen."

Just as bizarre is the choice of Blakeney's son-in-law, who has no direct connection with the sport, other than being married to Blakeney's daughter. Another strange selection was former Clemson football player Brentson Buckner, who is currently on the roster of the Carolina Panthers -- and thus figures to be busy on Sundays, when the votes are cast.

The BCS can ill afford more controversy after a series of fiascos with its computers and polls, and with the first voting weekend approaching (Sept. 25), this season is off to a bad start.