Now that the Associated Press has struck a deal with NFL Network to have the annual postseason awards announced on the league-owned broadcasting operation, with an annual awards show possibly in the offing, it’s time for the AP to change the way the voting is done.
Currently, the AP awards are determined by a 50-person panel, all of whom come from the media. Each person has one vote for each award. As to the All-Pro team, each voter casts one ballot per position on the field (e.g., one quarterback, two running backs, two receivers).
Though we haven’t seen the full list of folks who voted on the 2010 version of the awards, the process includes more than a few who don’t follow and/or write about and/or opine about the sport as closely as dozens of others who spend a lot more time focused on football. We’re not saying that part-timers and/or unemployed and/or underemployed scribes should be dumped from the process; instead, we think the panel should be expanded, say, to 100.
It could go even bigger than that, with current players and/or former players and/or coaches involved in the voting.
Also, a Heisman-style system with first-place, second-place, and third-place votes should be used. That would prevent ties, like the ones the process produced for MVP in 2003 (Peyton Manning, Steve McNair) and 1997 (Brett Favre, Barry Sanders).
Finally, voters should be held accountable for casting ballots that no reasonably competent voter would have cast. We have no idea who decided that Darren Sharper of the Saints was one of the best two safeties in the game, but the idea that a guy who appeared in eight games and started only one was one of the best two safeties in the entire league means that whoever picked Sharper either doesn’t know the game well enough, doesn’t follow the game closely enough, and/or doesn’t care about the awards sufficiently enough to merit the right to have a vote.
We don’t know whether any of these changes will be made. But we do know that they should be. Especially with the new NFL Network arrangement giving the awards an even higher profile and a stronger sense that the awards are the official awards of the NFL.
