Four-time Bassmaster Classic winner Rick Clunn recently gave BassFans his take on the U.S. Open cheating incident, and today he called to offer his opinion on the Bassmaster Elite Series post-season. He wishes it'd never been dreamt up.
"Really the thing that's a very sad travesty is what's been done to Skeet Reese the last couple of years," he said of the Californian who led the Angler of the Year (AOY) points list after each of the last 2 regular seasons, but lost the title to Kevin VanDam in the post-season on each occasion. "I'm not trying to pick on Kevin – I'm one of his biggest fans and all he does is goes out and fishes as hard as he can, and he's really a victim in this too with some people claiming it's his fault. But I can't imagine how anybody thinks this is a fair system.

"Skeet had a lead of over a hundred points, and then through somebody's mathematical ignorance it gets reduced down to 15 points. Then (BASS) makes the (4 post-season days spread over two events) more important than the other 32 days the man has fished during the season.

"They want to make it more like NASCAR," he continued, "but NASCAR has never been a fair sport, anyway. People in that sport have always tried to pull shenanigans and I don't think it's something we should be trying to copy. The people who run these tournaments don't understand how important the format is to the integrity, and what they've done is taken away the credibility of the Angler of the Year."

Clunn called Reese's season – which included two wins, two runner-up finishes and two 5ths in eight outings – one of the best he can recall in his 37 years as a tour pro.

"I understand that they want (the AOY race) to be competitive going down to the end, but they've really erased a historical year – they've basically put a lid on it and artificially gutted it. This is a farce and it's embarrassing and it's not fair to anybody.

"Anytime you try to handicap or socialize a performance-based sport, the end result is that you end up diluting it. Maybe it didn't seem so bad last year when the points were closer going in, but this year it's really been exposed."


i think he is right......if those 2 would have been regular season tournaments, skeet could have placed where he did in the 'post' season, and still would've won AOY handily.

Rick is a respected professional and his opinions are listened to. Of course KVD and Skeet are gonna have some biased opinions due to their personal experiences at the top level. I am guessing that the majority of the top 12 excluding Skeet and KVD don't like this format but I'm just guessing here. I have the same assumption for those Elite pros who didn't make it.

I like the format. Every angler knows that he is trying to make the top 12 at the end of the year. He also knows that if he makes that cut, he has a shot at the title. It doesn't, in my opinion, take anything away from Skeet and what he did during the season. However, the way that it is set up, he has to compete and do well at every tournament. Any angler that makes the top 12 has had a great season so to say that so and so doesn't deserve it is not really fair. Gerald Swindle won AOY and never even won a tournament that year. To me I would, rather have it this way then to have someone win without winning a single tournament. Chances are, no one will ever have another season like Skeet did so this format probably wouldn't be questioned if it had been closer in points at the end of the regular season. Under most normal seasons, it should be pretty fair for all 12 anglers.