Who gets to vote?
The Pro Football Hall of Fame’s 48-person selection committee is charged with electing new members.
The committee consists of one media representative from each pro football city with two from New York. There are 16 at-large selectors, all of whom are also active members of the media including one representative of the Pro Football Writers of America, and two members of the Hall of Fame.
The selection committee meets annually on “Selection Saturday,” the day before the Super Bowl in the host city to elect new members to the Hall of Fame. There is no set number of new enshrinees, but the committee’s ground rules stipulate that between four and eight new members will be selected each year. Every candidate is carefully scrutinized and must receive at least 80 percent approval of the committee at the annual meeting before he can be elected.
an opinion of how the women’s hoops teams stacked up in those days. There weren’t many intersectional games, and this was before ESPN3 and ESPNU and ESPN “The Ocho.” as few women’s games were televised.
If a women’s basketball team should forfeit a game because of crazy travel delays, nobody knew. Or cared.
We’re No. 26
One mostly would compare scores and adjust the poll from the week before. Based on that, one might move Louisiana Tech up or down a notch, depending on how badly the Lady Techsters had beaten Centenary.
Then one day Regina Miller, the former Lady Rebels coach, was talking about how receiving votes in the poll would help during recruiting or whatever.
Might a coach also use obtaining a national ranking as leverage during contract negotiations? Could the same coach be fired for not achieving one?
Too much responsibility for this voter.
It never occurred that my score comparisons and rankings of the women’s basketball teams could decide who got the blue-chip recruits and who got the contract extensions. I told the guy in Philadelphia I wouldn’t be voting anymore, and henceforth spent most Sunday evenings watching “The Sopranos” instead of tracking down Conference USA scores.
No women’s basketball poll, no baseball Hall of Fame vote, no NBA MVP vote and no NHL Lady Byng trophy. It’s a business in which the media doesn’t need to participate.
This is what I started to tell the Mountain West media elf when she left the all-tournament ballot on my laptop.
But she already had moved on, dropping another ballot into the lapofthefratboywhohadsneaked down to the press row shadows from the upper bowl and was now occupying the seat reserved for the Laramie Boomerang.
Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal. com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ ronkantowski on Twitter.