Media Microscope: Death To The MVP!

Posted Saturday, November 13, 2010 by YAHOO Sport

Right in the midst of the playoffs, the most exciting time of year in Major League Soccer, we are forced to endure one of the most insufferable: MVP debate season.

It’s not so much the debating itself that gets me; it’s more what is being debated- that great, intangible pie in the sky known as…value.

Value. Not quality, not superiority, not excellence. Value.

Stop me if you’ve read something like this before:

Maybe player x wasn’t the best player this season, but he was certainly the most valuable. What is value? Webster’s defines valuable as “having qualities worthy of respect, admiration, or esteem.” That is player x in a nutshell. His qualities are undoubtedly worthy of respect, as he is always respectful to other players, and more importantly, the media. My kids admire him, and he seems to have relatively high self-esteem. That’s why, my MVP vote goes to player x.

Wading through the existentialist pap each year becomes more and more of a chore for fans, and for the players, it’s patently unfair. Why should the league’s highest individual honor be left up to a voter’s definition of one malleable term?

Depending on whom you’re asking, “most valuable” can mean the player with the best stats, the best overall player, the best player on the best team, or the most clutch player, among countless other definitions.

A small sampling of some media members’ MVP choices and the reasoning behind them starts with Judah Levine at MLSsoccer.com for Sebastien Le Toux (best overall stats):

“Does Le Toux deserve it (the MVP)? Absolutely. The expansion draft selection has done everything humanly possible to help his club win, and then some. With one match left, the Frenchman has 13 goals, adding 11 assists for the highest combined mark in the league.”

Over at ESPN.com, Jeff Carlisle makes the case for FC Dallas’ David Ferreira (best overall player):

“In a period during which FCD's defense was hemorrhaging with injuries to its starting goalkeeper, both center backs, and their holding midfielder, Ferreira's production kept Dallas' campaign going in the right direction. That's why the Dallas midfielder should walk away with the league's top award.”

On the television side of the equation, a couple weeks ago ESPN’s John Harkes made the case for Edson Buddle (best player on best team):

"I would give it to Edson Buddle. I think that he had such a great start out of the gate and was a really important reason that pushed LA Galaxy up to the top. They finished strong, (winning the) Supporters' Shield. It comes down to Buddle.”

Finally, we have Brian Straus at FanHouse campaigning for Chris Wondolowski (most clutch):

“If we're going to take the award at its word, it's going to be a challenge to make a case for someone other than San Jose Earthquakes forward Chris Wondolowksi as this year's Major League Soccer MVP. The 'V' stands for 'valuable'. Not 'talented', not 'outstanding' and not 'famous'…..They're 5-2-2 since the start of September, and Wondo has nine goals during that stretch. That's clutch. That's value.”

The beauty of the 2010 MLS MVP race is that it perfectly illustrates the fallacy in this award. Some years, the player with the best overall stats, the best overall player, the best player on the best team, or the most clutch player might be the same guy. At the very least, there might be an individual that fits in a couple of the categories mentioned above.

Not in 2010. This year, a perfectly reasonable and logical argument could be made for no fewer than five and perhaps as many as ten players for being the league’s most “valuable” player.

There is a fix for this though. A simple, one-word fix as it so happens. Subtract “valuable,” and add “outstanding,” and a new, more accurate award emerges.

MVP: dead. MOP: born.

Would renaming the award MOP instead of MVP end all controversy and consternation surrounding the vote? No. Would it make the award less subjective? Yes and no. Allow me to explain.

Currently, an MVP voter has two distinct decisions they have to make when casting their ballot:

1. What is my definition of valuable?

2. Which player performed the best according to my definition of what valuable is?

Because each voter has to first decide their answer to question number one, by the time they reach question number two, it’s very likely they will be voting for something completely different than for which their colleagues are voting. The result? A completely muddled and not-at-all-definitive winner of the league’s highest individual honor.

By rechristening the award “Most Outstanding Player,” voters are given a much more narrow focus: who was the best player in MLS this season? In other words, it changes the vote from the aforementioned two-step process to just a single-step process.

Is the vote still subjective? Of course. Each voter still has to decide which player in the league played the best overall, and admittedly, some might have differing opinions of what “outstanding” means as well.

But I’d submit that the term “outstanding” leaves far less room for interpretation than the term “valuable.” It also makes the league’s premier individual award actually, you know, individual.

Sebastien Le Toux had an exceptional season and was the only player in the league to rank in the league’s top five in both goals and assists. His team wasn’t all that great though, and because of that Le Toux didn’t even make the cut for the final three in the MVP vote.

It would be pretty difficult for anybody to argue Le Toux wasn’t one of the league’s three best players this season, but due to the definition of this award, Le Toux wasn’t recognized because of, well, Chris Seitz.

And if a team’s howler-prone goalkeeper is what keeps an individual player from winning an individual award, it’s clear the system is broken. Time to fix it.