become a fan of mark ingram for heisman
(i am, but i am going to ignore your request)


made a point yesterday on facebook that i thought was worth expounding on here for a few minutes.

did you see the texas/nebraska game saturday night? yeah? me too. i was still coming down off of the high that was the sec championship game. since alabama had nailed down their spot in the title game, i figured it was worth my time as a fan to scout the probable competition, the texas longhorns. for weeks now, the consensus said the bcs title would pit the winner of the sec versus texas. for weeks now, the prediction has been playing out. alabama and florida marched towards their inevitable battle while texas mauled lesser opponents in the lesser conference that is the big 12.

saturday came and mark ingram, who many, if not most (including me!), had written off as a heisman candidate after being shut down by auburn, went off. the key component to the most impressive alabama offensive display this season had the usual tebow worshippers that were calling the game singing ingram's praises. 113 yards rushing. another 79 through the air, including the signature play of the game. the screen pass that answered florida's only touchdown took away any and all momentum the gators had momentarily grasped. all of his abilities were on display. the push through a couple armtackles. the burst of speed that it doesn't look like he should possess. the look of a bowling ball that would be terribly uncomfortable to hit and, thus, halt his rampaging forward momentum. it was all there, and it will be on the tail end of his heisman highlight montage saturday night.

and then came the texas/nebraska game. colt mccoy had made himself the favorite for the heisman on thankgving night against texas a&m, shredding their porous defense for what felt like 500 yards through the air and what felt like another 300 on the ground. he was the heisman frontrunner going into his own conference championship game, only somewhat forgot to tell ndamukong suh. the unstoppable defensive tackle from nebraska single-handedly embarrassed the texas offense. constantly in the backfield, constantly pressuring, if not sacking, the now former frontrunner for the stiff-armed trophy. former because, if you were watching the same game i was and had yet to cast your vote, you could no longer vote for mccoy. if he wasn't even the best player in his own conference, surely he could not be the best player in the country. that game, in spite of colt mccoy being a good to really good college football quarterback, lost him his heisman.

which gets us to the meat of the matter. so, ndamukong suh should win, right? well, he was the best player in that game. and he was certainly better at his job on saturday night than the right side of the texas offensive line was at theirs. but, is he heisman good? maybe. probably even. but therein lies the crux.

how many nebraska games did you watch this year. be honest. was it more than one? two? three? if you say more than three and you are reading this blog, i know you are lying.

how about texas games? did you even watch the texas/oklahoma game? after bradford got hurt, was it worth it? did you watch them thanksgiving night? when, then?

how about stanford? and toby gerhart? they played a terrible notre dame defense on local television two saturdays ago? did you watch him play then? any other times this season?

we all have seen tebow. we saw him saturday night too. ingram was better. that case is closed. that one is easy.

back to the other three candidates. so, what do we base our opinions of them on? their highlights, which, by definition, are highlights. bias. on espn talking heads that probably haven't seen many more of these candidates games than we have? bias. on sports blogs that try and counter mainstream media with more opinion and less hype? bias.

awards like the heisman are silly, just like the polls are silly. what ap poll or coach's poll or harris poll voter sits and watches 25-50 college games every saturday so they can come up with a close to objective sorting of teams. ZERO. how many heisman voters have seen every game of ingram's this year. every carry, block and reception, like i have. almost ZERO. so, how in the world do they vote in these polls? for these awards?

through whatever colored glasses their own personal biases bend them towards. it's as simple as that. and that's why these "big stage" games like we had on saturday are so vital to the measured votes being cast. it's quite unique for a college football team and its players to have the stage to themself. for four teams (we won't count the acc teams. sorry, spiller), they had that stage on saturday. colt mccoy was terrible. suh and ingram were the opposite. most likely, those performances, in the minds of many voters, exemplified what must have been the lion's share of their performances all year. we have enough mccoy highlight packages on espn to convince us otherwise on him, but with only two days between ingram and suh's signature games of their season, it makes perfect sense that they would be the odds-on favorites for the award that will be announced this coming weekend.

i don't want to slight toby gerhart. he is big and fast and white. all of which make for very good tv. i just don't believe his competition against pac-10 defenses was anything close to what ingram faced nine times this year.

why do i think that?

because i didn't see any of his games of course.

roll ingram.