Every Heisman contender has a Heisman moment – that game where, when it’s over, you say to yourself “wow, he really deserves the Heisman trophy.” After watching Colt McCoy rip Texas A&M to shreds tonight, I sort of had that feeling. Sort of.
After all, it’s easy to make a case for McCoy. He is 12-0, and likely headed for the national championship. He now has 27 touchdown passes and nine interceptions to go along with nearly 3,500 yards. However, the nine interceptions is more than he had in 13 games last season. And in order to match his touchdown and yardage total from a year ago, he needs seven TD passes and about 400 yards in the next two games. Even if he does that, he will have needed 14 games to do what he did in 13 in 2008. To go along with those monster 2008 numbers, he had 591 rushing yards. This year he has just 368, and only because he rushed for 175 tonight. He also has nine fewer rushing touchdowns.
Here’s the question: should we compare a Heisman candidate’s numbers to those of a season ago? My answer is no. But the voters will. And McCoy’s superior 2008 season wasn’t good enough to win the Heisman. Why should this year be different?
So what about Mark Ingram? The Alabama sophomore is 11-0, likely 12-0 after the Iron Bowl, and is averaging 6.8 yards per carry and 127 yards per game. He seems to be getting most of the talk right now, but why? Is it because the Tide are #2 in the nation? Because he plays for a school with a rich tradition? Because he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated? He only has 12 touchdowns. We might as well throw UTEP’s Donald Buckrem in the mix as well. He has more yards, yards per game and touchdowns than Ingram. And he certainly doesn’t have the offensive line Ingram has.
So do you give it to Ingram, with worse numbers than a handful of running backs from non-BCS schools, because those running backs don’t have to run against SEC opponents?
Here’s another running back you may not know about – Toby Gerhart. He plays for Stanford. Stanford is in the Pac 10, and believe it or not, it’s the best conference in the country. Don’t believe me? Read this.
Gerhart plays for a school who’s playing nine teams from the best conference in football, plus bowl eligible Notre Dame. All in all, Stanford has a schedule ranking (13) that’s 28 places higher than Alabama (41) and 43 places higher than Texas (56). Gerhart has rushed for 1,531 yards, second only to Buckrem, and has 23 rushing touchdowns, second to no one. But his team is 7-4. So I ask, should we give the Heisman to a guy with better numbers but a worse record? Tim Tebow won the award the year he went 9-4, but finished third the year he won a national championship at 13-1.
It’s taken me a while to get to this option, but I now present you with the only one that makes sense: Case Keenum. Say what you want about his strength of schedule or the Houston play calling. I’m about to shut you up.
Keenum is 9-2, and almost surely to be 11-2 following a Conference USA championship in a few weeks. He is more than 1,000 yards ahead of the next highest passer in the country. That’s unreal. Forget the schedule. He’s a machine. 1,000 yards? Are you kidding? He doesn’t have a Jordan Shipley on his team. There’s no Mark Ingram or Toby Gerhart to balance the offense. This is a one man show. Defenses know exactly what’s coming and still can’t stop it. That’s impressive. His 36 touchdowns leads the nation going away. He’s the only player in the country throwing for more than 400 yards per game. And for those of you saying that his pass attempts are inflated, try wrapping this number around your head: six interceptions. Six. in 553 pass attempts. McCoy has three more in 161 fewer attempts. And McCoy has a line that doesn’t let anyone touch him.
Keenum, unlike McCoy, will best his 2008 numbers, blow away all 2009 QBs in every statistical category, and, sadly, probably won’t even be invited to New York. But he should be. And he should win it. This is a very interesting race, and the other contenders have too many question marks surrounding their legitimacy. For once, give it to the little guy, on the little team.
My Heisman ballot:
1) Case Keenum
2) Colt McCoy
3) Toby Gerhart
Keenum is a good choice. A few points you missed. Houston lost to UTEP! and UCF! Coincidentally, both a week after UT crushed them. No Heisman winner should lose to those two. And Houston got worked by UTEP, which is pathetic. You can put that loss on Keenum because he had plenty of chances to score and I can attest that UTEP team is absolutely horrible.
Line up the SEC and the Pac 10 and the Pac 10 might win Three. Total. They definitely don’t win any of the important games. UF, Bama, and LSU all romp.
Sagarin is an idiot and has the worst rankings out of all the computers. I honestly don’t understand how they can possibly still contract him with the ridiculous shit his computer spits out. I would like to see the percentage of times that he is one of the two computers that gets thrown out when factoring in the rankings. I don’t understand why he is so famous compared to the others.
Houston is more talented than you think. This isn’t taking anything away from Keenum, just trying to defend their skill position talent.
One point where you are way wrong is about UT’s O-Line. They are very, very, very poor. I hate them, as do most UT fans. They are far and away the weakest unit on the team, other than perhaps kickoff coverage. If there is a way we lose to UF or Bama (or don’t beat Neb. by 30) it is because of the O-Line. McCoy’s numbers are partially down because they can’t pass block this year (they couldn’t run block last year, now they can’t do either). Luckily, McCoy is an extremely mobile QB and has a great feeling for pressure in the pocket.
I don’t think Keenum will win, but I agree he definitely deserves an invite. Especially over Ingram. My list is McCoy (could be biased, but not really sure because I thought he shouldn’t have been even in the conversation for 1/2 the year), Keenum, and don’t care. I refuse to say I want Tebow on my ballot and I just don’t think Ingram is a Heisman-level player. Gerhart I don’t like–probably a racial thing
Houston’s D have up 58 to UTEP. Keenum did his part. If Keenum had UT’s D, they would be undefeated.
Florida and Alabama would win. LSU would not. And I don’t know if any other SEC team is a lock. I’d say they go 5-5 or the Pac 10 wins. Oregon, OSU, Cal, Arizona, Stanford and USC would all beat anyone not named Florida or Alabama. The Pac 10 is the best conference. SEC is second. Big 12 is last.
Sagarin factors in both margin of victory and strength of schedule, which are important. He also does not put more emphasis on later season wins, whereas other computers do. That’s why I like him…I just agree with the way he emphasizes games. His NCAA basketball ratings are better than his football ones, but I like his football over any other. He was the only computer not to have Mizzou #1 when they were #1 in the BCS…and they were far from the #1 team in the nation that year.
You know UT better than me so I won’t argue with you about the line, but I’m looking at sack numbers and McCoy doesn’t get sacked.
I agree that Tebow should not go to New York. I would rather see Ingram there despite his unimpressive numbers.
Well I can’t argue about the Pac 10/SEC debate other than to say which conference would most teams rather play in; I think most would choose the Pac 10. Remember when people were jumping on the Big 12 bandwagon last year? Bowl season shut those people up in a big way. Especially the Tech lovers (never understood why people thought they were so good) after they got crushed by what turned out to be a very average collection of talent at Mississippi. Admittedly, they lost some good talent like Oher and Jerry, but that team is so disappointing at 8-4 it’s unreal.