steveperry wrote: there is a lot to question about this list, and I hope that details of the selection process are made public.
Process is pretty straightforward.
To be eligible, a player must be a member of his respective conference’s All Conference Team or a Conference Player of the Year. This puts pressure on conferences to do a better job of selecting the best players for their post season award teams. This is probably the point at which the current process has the greatest failure.
Player nomination forms must be completed by the head coach. This includes stats, previous awards (national & conference), and coach’s comments - particularly useful for defensemen and other non-glamour positions. It’s important for a coach to demonstrate that he believes his player is worthy of nomination. Many coaches do not do an adequate job of this.
Conference Directors, are also asked to include input comments as a more neutral evaluator. In addition conference directors are asked to place their conference’s nominees in rank order.
Applications consisting of a name only, or missing comments were not considered. I always asked directors to get incompletes filled out once before dicarding them.
Ballots were submitted to the MCLA Secretary, tallied, and All America teams defined. Voters included conference directors, presidents, divisional VPs, and the executive board (excluding myself).
I was asked this year by the Board of Directors to have the balloting completed so that the teams could be announced at the National tournament. Last year, the ballots were due after the tournament and which allowed a lot of the voters a chance to see these players compete (often head to head) and make evaluation. This may be a weakness of this year's results.