I can see where there were some strong egos back in 2003 that led to no discussion or consideration in the process. None of those people are still coaching so I am not sure how this alleged conspiracy continues.
Inertia, perhaps, or a sense that, "I'm the new guy, and this is the way that they do things around here, so I'm not going to rock the boat."
I can tell you that in football, in 1982 Lloyd Krumlauf was awarded COY after finishing 2nd because the undefeated coach, Augie's Bob Reade (RIP), asked the other coaches to vote for Lloyd because he thought he deserved it. I can also tell you that Mike Conway won in 2013 because John Thorne and Mike Swider basically demanded the other coaches vote for him. The same thing happened in 2018 for Larry Kindbom.
This basically proves my point that for the football coaches this is viewed as an open process. It may take one or two elder-statesmen voices to make it happen, but the precedents are there and the reality that someone other than the conference champion's head coach can be COY is both a matter of record and has multiple examples within very recent history.
Although there is no love lost between several of the CCIW football coaches, as you note, the sentiment among basketball coaches was very different with egos ruling the day way back when. I can't imagine Dennie Bridges telling the other coaches that Bosko deserved COY over him. And no one was going to bat for Grey Giovanne. I don't think that's true now.
I definitely agree. That's why I made the reference in my post yesterday to the 2003-era CCIW coaches being very much the products of past generations in which college basketball head coaches seemed to be a different breed than what they are now. I know that Sean has been impressed by the collegiality shown by his new CCIW coaching peers towards him, especially Anthony Figueroa and Mike Schauer in particular. I don't sense the holding-grudges vibes among the current crop of CCIW head coaches that seemed to be par for the course in the past, even among the ones who were known to socialize with each other on occasion in the off-season. Part of that is that the two current deans of CCIW MBB coaches, Schauer and Ron Rose, never really reflected that old sharp-elbows mentality, anyway.
I don't know if the Schauer vote this year was unanimous but I do know the Conway and Lindbom votes were definitely not unanimous. I just don't see the deductive reasoning that tells me the CCIW coaches vote is a rubber stamp today the way it was in 2003. I get the egos involved back then. But as you note, if there was some rubber stamp process there is enough of us in the know that would have heard more specifics. Otherwise how does Kramer Soderberg, Tom Jessee, Anthony Figueroa, Taylor Jannsen, and Sean Smith become part of the cabal?
You're doing the same thing as I am -- you're speculating in a vacuum regarding the inner workings of the COY vote. As I said, I've heard allusions to the gentlemen's agreement from the coaches, but I could never decipher how serious they were about it. They read the boards, after all, and they're aware of the regularly-recycled discussion on CCIW Chat regarding the alleged rubber stamp that they've been using for more than two decades now.
Certinly Bosko Jr and John Baines have enough experience that they may know where the "train station" is, but for me, it's hard to get on board with a multiple decades long rubber stamp without more compelling evidence.
We will have to agree to disagree on this, because the unbroken correspondence between award and championship over the past 21 years is to me more than compelling evidence that this is not a coincidence.
It is possible in my mind that this year there were two nominees and the coaches considered Schauer's resume (at that point) better than Sean Smith's. I would suspect if the vote was a week later, the result might have been flipped.
Taking for the sake of discussion that there is no rubber stamp, or that there was one but it left the premises with the departure of almost all of the old warhorses of CCIW MBB head coaching, what you're saying is certainly possible. It's also possible that, if this is true, Sean didn't win it because he's a newbie and Mike was the elder statesman who had never won it before and was past due to win it. I'd really hate it if that was the case, because Mike's performance as head coach
this season deserved better than a lifetime achievement award, but ... again, this is all just uninformed speculation on both of our parts.
