The Naval Academy and its fans are furious at ESPN for removing Navy quarterback Keenan Reynolds from the mainpage of its online Heisman poll despite the fact that the Midshipman topped the survey.
ESPN’s Heisman House voting site, co-sponsored by Nissan motors, where fans can vote for the player they think is deserving of college football’s greatest award, abruptly removed the Navy QB’s name from the poll page frustrating fans and the Naval Academy alike this week.
On Tuesday, Navy Athletics took to Twitter to alert fans and ask why ESPN removed their player from sight.
Why was Keenan Reynolds taken off the ESPN Heisman House Voting? You now have to look for him manually. https://t.co/P0MiTmcgRS
— Navy Athletics (@NavyAthletics) December 1, 2015
The Navy also pointed out that Reynolds was leading in the poll just before he was removed.
#NavyFootball QB Keenan Reynolds was running away with the fan vote so @Nissan or @espn took him off the ballot: https://t.co/cwE4ZCLKGw
— Navy Athletics (@NavyAthletics) December 1, 2015
The Navy QB wasn’t completely removed from the site. His name can still be found by navigating a series of drop down menus. But the rectangular voting button that appeared on the poll’s main page is now missing.
As The Federalist notes, “Reynolds currently holds the FBS record for most career rushing touchdowns… so it seems odd that such a successful player would be removed from the ballot, especially since he is currently leading the polls by a whopping 14 percentage points.”
For its part, ESPN claims that there is a perfectly sensible reason for Reynolds’ disappearance from the main page and it has nothing to do with any spite on their part. In fact, they claim it is a matter of automatic updates that are not in anyone’s direct control.
“According to an ESPN spokesperson,” The Washington Post’s Scott Allen reported, “the players with individual links on the Heisman House voting page are populated from the list of players in ESPN’s Heisman Watch Experts’ Poll. Reynolds was seventh and receiving votes in last week’s Experts’ Poll, but he did not receive any votes after Navy lost to Houston. (Whether the names on the voting page should be determined by the experts’ poll is another matter.)”
“When the names change on the ESPN Experts’ Poll, they automatically change on the Heisman House site. ESPN and Nissan have no control over what names are on the Heisman House ballot,” an ESPN spokesman insisted.
Fans can continue to vote for Reynolds, of course, but many have become frustrated by his name dropping off the main page.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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