SMITH EDGES SPARANO FOR COACH OF THE YEAR
As two other rookie coaches are battling in South Florida for a chance to advance to the divisional round of the playoffs, a first-year coach who was on the wrong side of a wild-card win has gotten a consolation prize.
Mike Smith has been named the Associated Press coach of the year.
By one vote.
Specifically, Smith received 23-1/2 votes and Sparano picked up 22-1/2. Presumably, this means that some wise ass sportswriter couldn’t make up his or her mind, and instead pulled a Solomon with the vote.
(Tennessee’s Jeff Fisher received three votes, and Bill Belichick of the Patriots got one. Shut out were Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, Tom Coughlin of the Giants, Tony Dungy of the Colts, John Harbaugh of the Ravens, John Fox of the Panthers, and Wade Phillips of the Cowboys. Just makin’ sure you’re paying attention.)
Last year, Belichick won the award with a unanimous vote of the 50 writers who have the exclusive say in the distribution of the NFL’s de facto “official” postseason prizes.
But as evidenced by the supposed mistake made by a multitasking Jay Paris of the North County Times in voting for Bengals linebacker Keith Rivers as defensive rookie of the year and the decision of someone to carve a vote in half, meaningful change is needed — or we should disavow the AP results as the “official” NFL postseason awards in the same way that the AP pulled itself out of the college football BCS formula.
For starters: (1) expand the pool of voters; and (2) have each voter name a first-place, second-place, and third-place selection.
With no 1/2-votes.
Ever.
And if a guy is too busy to take the matter sufficiently seriously to remove his head from his butt long enough to cast a meaningful vote, he should be stripped of his privileges.