The Heisman Trophy race

Every year, during the second half of the season, discussion on ESPN switches back and forth between the races for the national championship and the Heisman Trophy.  I pay quite a bit of attention to the national championship discussion, but don't bother so much with the Heisman Trophy.

I respect the Heisman Trophy, and think it is a very prestigious honor.  I even watch the show most years if I am able to.  Yet, I have a fundamental problem with an award for the best football player in a sport that is very much a team effort.



There does not appear to be any clear parameters for who should get the Heisman Trophy.  Certainly one thing to take into consideration would be the performance of the player's team if that player were not there.  Sometimes, though, a Heisman contender could make a good team great, or a great team untouchable.  And sometimes, a potential Heisman contender could be stuck on a doormat team where he is overlooked.

Like the decision process for the national championship, the Heisman decision can be flawed.  I will use Virginia Tech's David Wilson as an example.  I don't think he had any serious Heisman contention this year, but his name was mentioned as creeping up the list.

David Wilson is an amazing athlete.  Forget football, this guy can do things most people can only think about.  There are two plays from this season that really stick out in my mind.

First, in the Clemson game, Wilson gets stopped in the backfield.  Most other running backs would have been tackled and lost ten yards.  Instead, Wilson does some acrobatic move where he rolls over the defender's back and then arcs back around to the other side of the field and takes off up the sideline and gets a first down.

I can't remember which game the second play came from, I think it was the Georgia Tech game.  Wilson gets tackled and turned around, and still runs for over 5 yards backwards with multiple defenders trying to take him down.

This is in addition to the stories of him climbing Cassell Colisseum and doing 10 consecutive backflips at media day.

All of this amazing athletic ability, and I still hear someone putting down his stats because he hasn't gotten that many touchdowns.  That is where I start having problems with the Heisman discussion.

Football is a team game, and the team philosophy is very much encouraged in Frank Beamer's regime.  Wilson may not have the touchdown numbers, but he did a lot of the work to get the team into scoring position.  Plus, the true tale of Wilson's ability cannot be told through stats.  Going back to the first play I mentioned above, on a stat sheet, it would only show up as a 15 yard run and completely ignore all of the work (plus extra yardage behind the line and side-to-side) that went into getting that gain.

(Sadly, several of his touchdowns have gotten called back for a holding penalty, which is no fault of Wilson's.  This usually pushes Tech into long yardage situation where they have to pass, or they try one of those nifty quarterback draws where Logan Thomas is only supposed to get a couple of yards for a first down but barrels 20 yards into the end zone.)

Fortunately, there are still plenty of awards in college football to recognize all kinds of greatness and ability.  But I'm still more interested in the contests that create matchups on the field.