Daily Fix - Aug. 2

It's almost here but you still have to get through most of August until football season finally arrives. So we're giving you a daily football fix leading right up to the first games on Aug. 28. Sun sports writers Pat Dooley and Robbie Andreu will provide lists, trivia, Swampcasts and essays to get you through the rest of the summer.

Today, Dooley looks at the first USA Today coaches' poll.

Five things of note:

1. Nine SEC teams received votes. The only ones that did not — Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Arkansas. Not coincidentally, two of those schools had coaching changes. Less coincidentally, none of those schools' coaches votes in the poll.

2. Notre Dame, with nine, is the team that had the most losses last year that received votes. North Carolina, with eight losses, is second. Six teams had seven including Pittsburgh. Who voted for Pitt?

3. Interesting that Georgia was picked No. 1 and wasn't even picked by the SEC media to win its own division. I think it just shows the parity of college football. Six teams received first-place votes and you know there will be a couple of teams that come out of nowhere.

4. Urban Meyer turned down a chance to be a voter when he came to Florida but decided to go ahead and vote this year. When Meyer was asked to vote his first year, he was still trying to get his bearings and didn't need to be worrying about who to put 14th. When he was asked entering his fourth year at UF, I'm sure he felt more comfortable.

5. Duke did not receive a vote. That is significant because each year Steve Spurrier votes Duke 25th in his first poll as a tribute to the school that gave him his first head coaching job. It's harmless, really, and a nice thing for Duke. But every year some lunkhead who doesn't know they story gets bent out of shape because Duke gets a vote and then goes 1-11. The reason Spurrier didn't vote for Duke in the first 2008 poll? He was asked not to by the American Football Coaches' Association. "Grant Teaff (executive director of the AFCA) e-mailed me and asked me not to vote for Duke," Spurrier said. "I have a lot of respect for him and he felt it was hurting the integrity of the poll."