Ahh, the flood has already begun. People like to complain about All-Region selections but usually they don’t stop to consider the process.

For example:

I am infuriated on your all region picks on the running backs Xxx Xxxxxxxxxxxx from xxxxx has an average of 5.5 per carry 12 touchdowns a total of 1,285 yards. How can your pick Xxxxxx and these other running backs over Xxxxxxxxxxxx this is disgusting and so unfair is this done for political reasons. This is my son I’m his mother … I’m disgusted and upset you people are horrible and to top it off he’s a senior. He helped xxxxxx get to the playoffs I didn’t see Xxxxxx do that or the others. This is obviously fixed. I will make an issue of this you people are awful and phonies

Her son wasn’t actually nominated. Hard to get on the team that way. He also wasn’t first team All-Conference and often that weighs into the decision whether to nominate a player.

I also had a situation this year where a player that had gotten accolades in the past was not nominated. I went back to the school and they said the coaching staff felt he had not played at an All-Region level this season.

I had to respect that — but also in looking at the other players nominated in that region at that spot, I had to put that person on the ballot.

The process starts shortly after the season ends. In this instance, schools had an eight-day window in which to nominate their players. On that eighth day, I looked through the nominees and specifically targeted 30 schools that hadn’t nominated players. Anyone who responded to the e-mail and needed an extension got an extra 24 hours.

In the end, sure, there are even worthy players who were nominated and just didn’t get enough votes. I understand that. We try to be perfect but I doubt we ever will be.

For that I apologize. We’ll continue to try to get better.

Monday evening, the nomination window closed for our All-Region teams. As I was looking through the ballots and testing the voting software, I found something unusual. Two of the four regions didn’t have even the minimum three tight ends nominated to fill our three teams.

So I started looking through the All-Conference teams to see whom I could plug in to fill the gaps and to my surprise, quite a few conferences don’t even bother to honor tight ends at the end of the year.

What the heck has happened to the tight end?

I do understand that run-blocking tight ends are hard to nominate because the statistics just aren’t there to entice someone to vote. But it seems like there are a lot of schools at which nominating tight ends is simply not on the radar. We saw it all season with the Team of the Week. But one un-nominated tight end was the leading receiver on his team. Another was the No. 2 receiver on his team and came from a school that nominated several other players, so it wasn’t like they forgot to nominate altogether.

I do also understand that teams using a spread or run-and-shoot aren’t always going to feature a tight end in the passing game. And in some cases, the person listed as a tight end lines up in the slot far more than as an actual end. (One of the most prominent “tight ends” in Division III fits that description.) But in the end, how can a region of 55 or so teams not have three tight ends worth nominating?