Heisman voting done too early?
Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times makes a great point that the Heisman Trophy shouldn’t be voted on until after the bowl games have been played.
Every year, the voters are forced to decide the winner too darned early.
For years, this has been the most annoying thing of all about the Heisman. The committee just can’t wait to give it out. The movie is still going on, and already, these guys want to toss Academy Awards at the screen.
This year, for instance, voters are supposed to have their ballots returned by Dec. 10. At least the voters can wait until after Tebow and his Florida teammates play top-ranked Alabama for the SEC title and until either Bradford or Harrell or Texas’ Colt McCoy play for the Big 12 title.
On the other hand, the national championship game won’t be played until Jan. 8, almost a month after the deadline. Who knows? Perhaps it will be Tebow vs. Bradford. Maybe Tebow vs. Harrell.
Just asking here, but shouldn’t that game be factored into the voting?
In his article, Shelton has a table that illustrates how several winners in the past decade (Ohio State’s Troy Smith, USC’s Reggie Bush, Oklahoma’s Jason White, Nebraska’s Eric Crouch) all won the Heisman and then turned in average to atrocious bowl game performances.
He brings up a fantastic point – why isn’t the national championship factored in to Heisman voting? It’s supposed to be the most important game in the college football season, yet it doesn’t play a factor in determining who the best player in college football is? It’s not fair for a player to lose the Heisman with one bad performance, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to (and I’m borrowing Shelton’s point) hand out season awards when the season isn’t even over.
Because there is no National Championship game, fool. All we have is a football game played last in a line of bowls with two teams who have been arbitrarily picked to play each other…and they call it a NC. Bull Manure. So why should the Heisman be decided on that game? We all know that Heisman, like poll voters, are idiots who can’t see past the last game, in order to evaluate an entire season. At least they are forced to look a little bit backward this way.
I’m with you hoss – read everything else I’ve ever written on this site. And I agree that voters can’t look past this morning, never the less over entire season so slow down on the fool-name calling.
Still, if college football declares that this is the biggest game of the year, than it should have a barring on handing out what college football declares as it’s most important award.