Theme week, eh?

[Peace 1,518]

Awards used to be something I looked forward to, they were something I once had a burning passion for but that flame has long went out. I'd argue it was snuffed out, actually, and I guarantee I ruined it myself during my time as a member of the VHL Award Committee. Haven't heard of that before? It was a role here prior to it being demolished and the responsibilities returned to BoG hands some time ago. The experience I had within the committee truly tainted how excited I used to get, and the realization I felt when I realized some awards boiled down to a popularity contest more than they really should have... destroyed my passion for anything related to awards.

 

Gorlab used to complain about the awards frequently, and now that I've been around probably far too long I've started to grow a likeminded opinion about them, although perhaps not as flamboyant as his views were and certainly not parallel with his vision of winners.

The graphics are really nice, but they've never truly excited me enough to read the thread; the descriptions of the winners are neat, but they feel copy and pasted despite being untrue; the thread itself has been chaos lately, rather than an organized and neatly delivered event for the league; and inescapably everyone bitching (including me) further sours the experience. Everything around the VHL award show has me ultimately feeling 'meh' about even the slightest mention of them, and now I have to cover it for theme week. 

Well now I'm about halfway to the destination. Five hundred words about the awards seems daunting, but I suppose I've already written half an article about how I feel about them. There is no concrete solution, there is no way the people who create the awards or present them can fix how I feel about it, but I am capable of expressing excitement when one of my roster players wins an award. Now I'll admit that there were a few close calls, a few times where I thought a member of Toronto would win -- biased opinion or not -- and was disappointed when they didn't. It was those times I hope for their sake it wasn't a popularity contest, but without transparent award discussions there will never be closure to that particular concern. 

Chad Magnum winning the Boulet in S73 was amazing, followed by John Merrick taking home another prestigious award before leaving Toronto. When those two won awards, I was happy and excited for them, but I recall just browsing the actual ceremony and looking for any Toronto tags. Beyond that the thread was ignored, left to collect dust I'd blow away when I needed. I recall going back and rereading award ceremonies when I was the GM of Saskatoon just to build ideas for media spots around my roster players, but as GM of Toronto through the mid season seventies I just look at the awards tab on the portal and that suits my needs fine enough as is. It doesn't help that no Legion player has won an award since Merrick, apparently (although I swore we had a most improved since then) so maybe all it'll take for me to build interest again is getting some Legion individuals some hardware. 

Well that's it! I'm pretty sure I'm over the limit now. 

 

Edited August 17, 2021 by Peace

[Beketov 8,653]

6 minutes ago, Peace said:

It was those times I hope their wasn't a popularity contest, but without transparent award discussions there will never be closure to that particular concern. 

TBH even if we held the discussions in public it wouldn’t change anything. Fact is that member never factors into award decision, we don’t consider it in the slightest and I’d wager a lot of the BOG doesn’t even know the member attached to each name because there are so many players now.

 

There was definitely a time where bias was pretty rampant but it certainly has not felt that way in a long time.

 

On the whole the AC also wasn’t a horrible idea on paper but it lacked any kind of consistency because of the way we designed it, it was flawed from the start and we just didn’t realize it. Making it a rotating door of members was nice on paper but meant that every season the definition of what qualified for an award would change. People talk as if that happens now but it’s more so discussion of the weighing of certain things depending how the league overall did with them moreso than changing what qualifies for an award every season. Famously I argued against Beaviss winning the Boulet once because the AC that season decided it loved +/- even though historically hits have been super important (whether people agree or not) so had he won he would have had less than half of the lowest hits ever for a Boulet winner. Consistency was not key.

 

Anyway, rambling aside, my point is that obviously no one will ever believe us about basically anything, and certainly not bias or preferential treatment, but popularity does no weigh into the BOG voting. Slobo voting…. Yeah probably but that’s on the league as a whole, we can’t really fix a public vote without taking it away from the public.

[ROOKIE745 572]

review: I appreciate the more personal tone of this, I've never totally kept up with the awards but hearing your story makes me feel a little less excited about them myself. Anyway good pacing through out and it's a straightforward read. Good spelling and your points are clear and concise. Considering the more personal tone here I think no picture or fancy text is fine. 10/10