*The Awards Committee Sux Lmap

[mithrandir]

Hi Momento Mori. Thank you for offering these valid criticisms. There is certainly always room for improvement with awards, but let me offer some insights into these concerns as a team rep on the committee this year.
1. We had an incredibly tight turnaround and had about ten to twelve hours of discussion over a two day period.
2. The DE and DT awards were perhaps a little inconsistent. This particular award was discussed after about five hours of discussions and many of the team reps had checked out at that point.
3. I don't think there is a single defensible case that a potential winner of any of these awards was left off the ballot.
4. The linebacker positional award by itself was discussed for 90 minutes. Linebacker is an incredibly difficult position group to evaluate given their extreme versatility. In the end, Edmonds was the last person booted from the list, essentially the sixth place nominee. One could argue he deserved a nomination, but no one was beating Mo Berry for that award.
5. You and I have the exact same thought process on safeties. The inconsistency in leaving Edmonds off but including Sexjoke bothered me immensely. We messed this one up. I didn't think Awkward Sexjoke deserved a nomination over Hellzapoppin especially, and Vegeta and Hughes were also among the final cuts at the position.
6. We had a really hard time finding five good nominees for defensive breakout player but felt like we needed five. Clearly Kroustis and Virtanen didn't belong on that list as they were just as good last year. Obviously the voters agreed.
7. Leaking information about the awards ballot ahead of time is a serious offense and should result in a ban from ever serving on the committee again.
8. I didn't sense in-fighting on the committee. There were some passionate discussions as might be expected when two highly invested committee members disagree. I never saw any insulting or disrespectful conversations in the committee discussion. There is no place for that.