VANIER TIME: A HEC OF A CONTROVERSY

Those who really follow CIS football were not all surprised -- and many were royally ticked -- when they learned yesterday Windsor Lancers running back Daryl Stephenson had won the Hec Crighton Award as this country's top university player.

Word leaked out on cisfootball.org a couple hours before the official announcement -- in what has almost become a tradition, the CIS couldn't make a media embargo stick, which is neither here nor there. As of this writing, shortly after midnight Eastern, there's still a pretty lively debate going on at that message board, with some 75 replies.

It's not a slam on Stephenson, the country's leading rusher. God knows what he and his people at Windsor would think about the Internet ruckus. Does he realizes that it's not about him, or does he just go, "Whatever, they can all just freakin' eat me. I've rushed for 1,000 yards three years in a row."

True, this minor uproar is coming after a player from a school that's not known as a football powerhouse won, not someone from, say, McMaster or Western, but the resentment has been brewing for years. Try seven years, 'cause that's how many years in a row a player from Ontario University Athletics has received the Hec. And there's some sympathizers within Ontario.

The ruckus among those of us in the CIS football cult stems from discontent with a screwed-up process that throws the game's credibility into question. The CIS has created a royal mess. Some people are tagging the Hec as the "OUA's Leading Rusher Award," which isn't entirely true. Sometimes it goes to the OUA's top quarterback (McMaster's Ben Chapdelaine in 2001 and Queen's Tom Denison in '02-03) or the OUA's best receiver (Western's Andy Fantuz in '05). Without going into the merits of each winner, seven straight Hec winners from the same conference is a bit much, don't you think?

The point is the obvious. Honouring a running back who only managed to rush for 100 yards once against a decent-quality defence (Stephenson had 104 yards on 25 carries in a win against Laurier, for a merely serviceable 4.2 average) as the country's top player is proof that a badly designed selection process will inevitably lend itself to a false positive. Can someone even tell me how the Hec Crighton is picked? I've never been told, and I follow this game religiously. CIS football has been notorious for this with its individual awards and all-Canadian picks. The process needs reform, badly.

This was a last straw. Stephenson had a good year, but not a great one. Duane Rollins, editor of College Colours, did the math: In the regular season, Stephenson averaged 198 yards against the OUA's four worst teams (Guelph, York, Waterloo and the University of Toronto) and averaged, wait for it, just 86 yards against the four playoff teams Windsor faced.

The Lancers also never faced conference champion Ottawa, who also had the CIS' stingiest run defence. If the Lancers had played Ottawa in lieu of the U of T, whom Stephenson gained 235 yards on just 12 carries against in a 61-17 blowout, it very likely would have knocked anywhere from 100-150 yards off his final total.

Chris Ciezki of the British Columbia Thunderbirds, who joined Stephenson as an all-Canadian pick at running back, couldn't even be included in the official Hec debate, thanks to the something-for-everyone policy that every conference has to have a candidate for each major award. Ciezki ran well against everybody, although his numbers were skewed by a 328-yard, five-touchdown night against lowly Simon Fraser.

But don't miss the point here: Ciezki was completely left out since under the rules, only Regina Rams QB Teale Orban, and Orban alone, was allowed to carry the Can West banner against Stephenson. If it's so important for each conference to have a football MVP, rookie of the year, top defender and top lineman, let them pick them on their own time -- and dime. Let's move past regionalism and the everyone-gets-a-cookie mentality, and honour the best players, period.

Not that anyone asked for my two cents, but there's another niche collegiate sport whose player-of-the-year process seems to work much better. And players from different conferences even win once in a while, imagine that! In U.S. college hockey, picking the Hobey Baker Memorial Award takes place over several weeks. Each head coach gets a vote, and has to pick three players from his team's league, and three others from across the country.

There's also online balloting for fans. It's all weighted, using some calculated math that I could never possibly understand, but eventually, 10 players are put on a short list that goes to a selection committee of people who really know the game --pro scouts and journalists. They pare it down to three finalists, and the winner is honoured at the Frozen Four.

If the CIS wants to get more people to take it seriously, it should explore something similar, for the sake of its own credibility and the Hec Crighton's. Here's hoping some mainstream media types start beating the drum on this, since they're more likely to get the Canadian Interuniversity Sport's attention than some guy with a blog.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.