Sports: December 2006 Archives
No, I have had nothing to do with this.
Backstory: Rory Fitzpatrick is a somewhat sub-par, but not terrible, defenseman who plays for the Vancouver Canucks. For whatever reason, there has been a massive write-in campaign to get him elected to the All-Star game, and he is second in voting for the Western Conference.
I've heard lots of people complain about it, trying to find out what can be done about it. But the answer about what can be done is simple: improve the All-Star voting so it is not stupid.
The reason I screwed around with MLB All-Star voting a bunch of years ago is because the system was so flawed. It lacked integrity. You could submit hundreds of paper ballots, but only a couple dozen online? And with no good security measures to prevent it (they've since improved)? It was lame, so I showed it to be lame.
NHL voting is far worse. First, they have some of the same problems, but to compound the problem, only a handful of players are even on the ballot in the first place. The Boston Bruins have only two players on the entire ballot, and one of them is not even Glen Murray, one of the top goal-scorers in the league over the past several years.
The problem is respect. No one respects the NHL All-Star voting process. It's stupid, and no one cares, so they screw with it. That is a fixable problem, of course, but it is not about changing the process to try to prevent this, or trying to market the thing to change attitudes, it's about making it so the All-Star voting is actually a good process that gets a result people can respect.
Backstory: Rory Fitzpatrick is a somewhat sub-par, but not terrible, defenseman who plays for the Vancouver Canucks. For whatever reason, there has been a massive write-in campaign to get him elected to the All-Star game, and he is second in voting for the Western Conference.
I've heard lots of people complain about it, trying to find out what can be done about it. But the answer about what can be done is simple: improve the All-Star voting so it is not stupid.
The reason I screwed around with MLB All-Star voting a bunch of years ago is because the system was so flawed. It lacked integrity. You could submit hundreds of paper ballots, but only a couple dozen online? And with no good security measures to prevent it (they've since improved)? It was lame, so I showed it to be lame.
NHL voting is far worse. First, they have some of the same problems, but to compound the problem, only a handful of players are even on the ballot in the first place. The Boston Bruins have only two players on the entire ballot, and one of them is not even Glen Murray, one of the top goal-scorers in the league over the past several years.
The problem is respect. No one respects the NHL All-Star voting process. It's stupid, and no one cares, so they screw with it. That is a fixable problem, of course, but it is not about changing the process to try to prevent this, or trying to market the thing to change attitudes, it's about making it so the All-Star voting is actually a good process that gets a result people can respect.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
