No dog in any fight

In the wake of awards season, you might like to know that Pete Carroll isn't the only one who recuses himself from voting in college polls.

A few years ago, the Los Angeles Times implemented a policy that prohibits the paper's staff from participating in the type of media votes that you've been hearing about all season. Per Sports Editor Randy Harvey, "The reason is simple: We are here to report news, not make it."

The policy is in line with other major papers like the New York Times, Washington Post, and Baltimore Sun. The voting-neutral movement at the LA Times started under former Editor John Carroll. It casts a wide net, meaning the Times avoids other polls and awards commonly associated with Hollywood or Washington. In the sports world, the policy extends to obvious situations like the AP poll and Heisman balloting, and less obvious ones like naming an official player of the game.

The policy helps the paper avoid conflicts of interest and other headaches.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a healthy debate over the paper's voting policies.

Bill Dwyre, who preceded Harvey as Sports editor and currently writes two columns per week, believes sports writers are well qualified and bring valuable expertise to the table. "Any voting system in sports is imperfect, but the least imperfect system is sports writers who get paid to know this better than anybody."

He added that, "Coaches have much more of an ax to grind than we do ... we have less [of an] agenda than anybody else." If it weren't for the paper's current policy, Dwyre would happily mark his ballot for the MLB Hall of Fame or the Wooden Awards. "When something is named for John Wooden, I want that to be as pure and above reproach as possible."

Dwyre does agree that specific big-money situations, like the BCS and the Schilling Rule (see conflict of interest link above), might be inappropriate for media voting. But at the end of the day, he feels the Hall of Fame and CY Young are "best handled by people who have been around for awhile and have followed this closely."

Another perspective, currently being voiced by Tom Van Riper at Forbes, is that entities like the MLB should use more public fan-votes. Not missing a beat, ESPN and Sports Illustrated are pushing voting brackets to crown a hypothetical college football champion.

For now, The Times will continue to abstain on all of this. Or as one person in the Sports department joked, "Our folks don't vote for anything -- just complain about everyone else's silly choices."

Comments

[Asim Rasheed]

I wouldn't agree with Dwyre about sports columnists being impartial. Pick up any newspaper in the South or Midwest and I am willing to bet that wouldn't be going ga-ga over teams from Pac-10.