I think the original idea was to document that all methods of the loop are coroutines, so that:

1. if a user needs a Future object they call ensure_future: 

   fut = asyncio.ensure_future(loop.method())

2. it gives us ability to refactor things. For instance, sock_connect was a method that returned Futures, but at one point of 3.5 we changed it to be coroutine.  Because the method was documented as a coroutine, it wasn't strictly a backwards incompatible way.

In general, I think it would be safer for us to simple make all loop methods coroutines. Or, less radical, just keeping the status quo: document everything as a coroutine.