The trouble with polls is that they're always open to heated debate. It's especially true in black college football. Exhibit A is the venerable Sheridan Broadcasting Network poll, which crowned Grambling State the 2008 national champion and left South Carolina State second. Exhibit B is the rival Boxtorow.com/BASN poll, which mirrored SBN.

The Tigers won 23 of 30 first-place votes in the Sheridan poll, and 12 of 16 from Boxtorow.com/BASN. Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't deny polls' power to generate an argument, and these results will be debated for a while. In the interest of full disclosure, I was a Sheridan pollster for a couple of seasons in the mid-1990s, and participated in this year's Boxtorow.com survey. There's no denying Grambling (11-2) had an excellent campaign that included a 10-game winning streak and a sweep of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, including East champion Jackson State twice.

But the league overall was down in 2008, and the East Division wasn't anywhere close to the West, where Grambling and Prairie View (fourth in both polls) were head and shoulders above the crowd. I voted S.C. State (10-3) No. 1 because the Bulldogs roared through a more competitive Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference with an unbeaten record. Their three losses were to Football Bowl Subdivision programs Clemson and Central Florida and Appalachian State in the first round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. None of those games were on S.C. State's home field and the Bulldogs played three-time FCS champ Appalachian State tougher than anyone dared imagine for 50 minutes. Perhaps it all came down to final impressions.

Grambling won the SWAC title on national TV the week after S.C. State was eliminated from the FCS playoffs. Tuskegee, a Division II program and the 2007 national champ, lost to Division I rival Alabama State on Thanksgiving Day, snapping a 26-game winning streak. The Golden Tigers finished third in both polls. Don't hold your breath for the return of a black-college championship game like the ill-fated Heritage Bowl in the '90s.

Besides, it would spoil the fussing over who's top dog. Or cat.