Chris Dufresne: Harris, we have a problem ...

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Just when I thought it was safe to trust the Harris Interactive College Football poll...

...Tennessee checked in with a vote last Sunday in the first Harris standings release.

Tenna-frickin-see.

Not sure how you get a top-25 vote for starting out 1-3 with one of those losses at UCLA, which has since lost three straight games by the cumulative score of 126-14.

But one Harris voter last week, on his first try of the season, stuck Phil Fulmer’s Flummoxed Footballers at the end of his ballot.

Tenna-frickin’-see’s lone win this year was against Alabama-Birmingham, which is 1-4.

No harm, right? Harris pollsters only have make their final votes public, so why not have some early-season fun.

Except, my theory on polls is, if you have no credibility on the bottom, you have no credibility on the top. I don’t count shenanigans at the end of my top-25 poll because I am not a voter in the Associated Press or Harris indexes. So go you No. 25 Fightin’ Irish!

I thought Harris, after a rough start in 2005, had gotten its act together and actually, last year, did a more responsible job than the USA Today coaches in the final BCS standings.

Hal Mumme, the New Mexico State coach, actually voted Hawaii No.1! And the highest vote Clemson received was a No.11 handed over by the Clemson coach’s dad, Bobby Bowden.

THANKS DAD!

But Tennessee? No telling how high the Vols will rise if they can survive plucky Northern Illinois in Knoxville this weekend. Maybe UT will crack the Harris voters’ T-10.

Harris, made up of 114 panelists from various walks of sporting life, became part of the Bowl Championship Series formula in 2005 after the Associated Press, troubled with some conflict-of-interest issues following the great Cal-or-Texas-in-the-Rose Bowl rankings debate of 2004, pulled its poll out by issuing a terse cease-and-desist order.

Apparently the BCS had been using AP without permission ... since 1998. Reminded me of that great quote from Captain Renault in Casablanca: ‘I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!’

Oh well, the poll fun is just starting, and the first BCS standings don’t even come out until Oct. 19.

As Minnie Pearl, that late, great Tennessean, who died in 1996, too soon to vote in the Harris poll, might have said : ‘Hold on to your $1.98 hat.’

-- Chris Dufresne