Change isn’t always for the best.

The Conerly Trophy, which honors the state’s best college football player, has switched its nomination format in time for the 2009 award, which will be the 14th year for the state’s equivalent of the Heisman Trophy.

The trophy is a great honor for the recipient and the award is a credit for a state where some extremely good college football is played.

The nomination process before was simple.

All players at the state colleges and universities were eligible and were selected by members of the state media. Players were selected with the first ballot and the top vote-getters were represented on the second and final ballot. Any one school could have any number of nominees.

Now, that has all changed.

Voters will now have to pick one player from each of Mississippi’s 10 football-playing institutions of higher learning on their first ballot, then three finalists and a winner on the second ballot.

That means one school, one nominee.

If you want DeAndre Brown, Austin Davis or Damion Fletcher on your ballot from Southern Miss, you’re going to have to choose one.

If you want Jevan Snead, Dexter McCluster or Cordera Eason on your ballot from Ole Miss, one of them is all you’re going to get.

If you want Anthony Dixon, Tyson Lee or Jamar Chaney on your ballot from Mississippi State, you’re going to have to pick one and only one.

Same with all of the other schools. One team. One player. One vote.

Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame executive director Michael Rubenstein said in a press release that “we needed to re-energize and refocus public attention on our state’s highest football honor while maintaining maximum fairness.”

Fairness is a laudable virtue and the intentions of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame are to be saluted. But how is this fair to a voter who wants to put, say, Brown and Fletcher on one ballot? It begs to be said that several of the 10 finalists will be undeserving of this very high honor. Not every one of the 10 schools has the collection of talent that the others do. Football is cyclical.

Just like with the Major League All-Star Game, each team has to be represented, which results in better players from winning teams being left out.

And what about this call to fairness? It’s not like the “Big Three” of Southern Miss, Ole Miss and Mississippi State have a complete, unbreakable stranglehold on the award. The first player who won the award, running back Tregnel Thomas, hailed not from one of the “Big Three,” but from the NCAA Division II’s Delta State, which has two trophy winners from its excellent program. Three finalists also have come from Jackson State.

Also, last year’s recipient, Millsaps quarterback Juan Joseph, became the first player in the award’s history not to come from the Big Three or Delta State.

So leave it up to the voters. Spreading the wealth doesn’t work in economics and definitely does not work in football awards either.

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Steve Wilson is the sports editor of the Vicksburg Post. You can reach him at swilson@vicksburgpost.com or at 601-636-4545, extension 142.