What they’re saying about the Heisman
Posted on Monday, December 10, 2007
KEN DAVIS, MSNBC. com This won’t settle well in Gainesville, Fla. I’ve never been there. And it’s not likely I’ll be invited to visit any time soon. Not after this column. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow didn’t deserve the Heisman Trophy. Not this year. In fact, he didn’t even make the top three picks on my ballot. Florida was 9-3 overall and 5-3 in the SEC. Teams with three losses don’t enter the BCS discussion. Florida didn’t win the SEC East. The Gators didn’t play in the SEC Championship Game. LSU beat Tennessee for the conference championship and advanced to the national championship game with two losses. Georgia has been widely discussed as one of the hottest teams in the nation. Florida ? The Gators lost to Auburn, LSU and Georgia and are headed to the Capital One Bowl to play Michigan. Tebow did not lift the Gators to great heights. After the loss to Georgia, he padded his stats with victories over Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Florida Atlantic and Florida State. My No. 1 vote went to Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden. He was my preseason Heisman pick, and even though his speed and athletic ability sets him apart, there were times during the season when he fell behind in my eyes. He lifted himself back to the top against LSU. That day he was the most outstanding, most exciting player I watched all season. McFadden should have won this time. He found himself playing second fiddle to Tebow — just as he did last year to Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith. But on my list, McFadden was No. 1, followed by Brennan and then [West Virginia quarterback Pat ] White. If White hadn’t been injured against Pittsburgh, he would have rallied the Mountaineers into the national championship game.
RALPH D. RUSSO, The Associated Press Tim Tebow has two years to catch Archie Griffin — maybe even pass him. The Florida quarterback had been the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy for about 10 minutes Saturday night in Manhattan when the inevitable questions started about winning a second bronze statue. By the time he got to the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square to face a room full of reporters and was asked again about repeating, he couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m just trying to get ready for Michigan,” Tebow said. The Gators play the Wolverines in the Capital One Bowl on Jan. 1, but it’s hard not to peek ahead to Florida’s 2008 season and wonder if Tebow can join Griffin as the only two-time Heisman winners. The Ohio State tailback did it in 1974 and ’ 75. Since then, only a handful of players have had a chance to match him. Oklahoma tailback Billy Sims came close, finishing second to USC’s Charles White in 1979. BYU quarterback Ty Detmer (1990 ), Oklahoma quarterback Jason White (2003 ) and Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart (2004 ) also returned to school after winning a Heisman. Each followed-up with a thirdplace finish. Tebow has said he plans to complete four seasons at Florida, though he wouldn’t be the first kid to change his mind and jump to the NFL early. If he does play out the string and take two more shots at the Heisman Trophy, he could conceivably become the first three-time winner. Tebow certainly has the talent to win another Heisman. He’s no fluke. ISRAEL GUTIERREZ Miami Herald Tebow already experienced a season’s worth of backlash for being one of the most talked-about players in college football. He received nasty messages from LSU fans before he played the Tigers. He was assured by Florida State players that his dreams would be dashed. And all season long he was hit a little bit harder, punished a little bit longer and smacked a little bit past the sound of the whistle — all by players wanting to alter the tooperfect-to-be-true story of Tim Tebow. None of it worked this time, as Tebow brushed aside all attacks with relative ease. A bruised right shoulder and a broken right hand were minor setbacks in his battles. The Heisman Trophy that Tebow held up with a healthy left hand and a casted right one were proof of his victory. Next year, it won’t come as easy. That Heisman Trophy may as well have come dipped in blood, because the sharks are coming. Tebow won’t be the first to come back after winning a Heisman. Just this decade, Oklahoma’s Jason White and Southern Cal’s Matt Leinart both won it in their junior seasons and came back for their senior years. But White was a relatively anonymous champion playing in middle America, not a home-schooled prodigy with a Web site that gathers preposterous “facts” about his abilities. And Leinart was a Hollywood celebrity who had to worry more about paparazzi than blitzing linebackers, not the player labeled a protege for the quarterback of the future by the likes of Steve Spurrier and Bobby Bowden. BERNIE MIKLASZ, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Chase Daniel didn’t win the Heisman Trophy, but he was no loser. This entire season has been a triumph for Mizzou and its quarterback, and individual awards are a bonus. It was a tremendous victory for him, and symbolically powerful for Missouri, just to have Daniel be recognized as one of the top A-list college football players in America. As Daniel sat there in the front row of the Nokia Theater in Manhattan, a college junior making the scene in the biggest, most bustling town of them all, I hope he realized how far he’d come. Mizzou was a nowhere program for decades, a middle-America enigma. Coach Gary Pinkel put the building blocks in place, but he needed a catalyst, a synthesizer, to make it all go. And Daniel became the leader of a dramatic revival that spurred Mizzou to the No. 1 ranking in the nation in the last week of November. The entertaining and credible Web site heismanpundit. com lists Daniel among the top three Heisman hopefuls for next season, along with Ohio State running back Chris Wells and West Virginia quarterback Pat White. Daniel’s Heisman hopes would be dashed if he’s injured, or slumps, or if Mizzou collapses in ’ 08. And he’ll still have to overcome the tendency of voters to give the Heisman to players from more traditional powers. But Chase is on his way. For Mizzou, Daniel’s trip to New York was like a trip to the moon.
JOHN MCGRATH, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash. Florida quarterback Tim Tebow took home the Heisman Trophy on Saturday. Conventional thinking held that Tebow deserved to win in a landslide.
He wasn’t among the three names submitted on my ballot.
Such a reluctance to jump aboard the Tebow Bandwagon makes me a pariah among those who can’t fathom that the race was even open to a debate. After I shared my doubts about Tebow’s statscentric Heisman candidacy a few weeks ago, I received several responses from readers.
“Your ballot should be permanently retracted,” wrote one critic, who meant “revoked,” but I caught the drift. “You are a hack and a small-town hack at that.” Asked another: “Do you just look at box scores, or do you actually watch games ?” I try to do both, but it’s a pertinent question, for Tebow’s campaign took launch in a game few voters saw — a Nov. 17 contest between the Gators and Florida Atlantic. A second-quarter Tebow touchdown, on a 2-yard run, meant little in the 59-20 rout, and yet it meant everything to the Heisman race.
It assured Tebow would become the first major college player to rush for at least 20 touchdowns and throw for at least 20 TDs in the same season.
Although a pre-trophy poll, published earlier that week, showed Oregon’s Dennis Dixon as the clear front-runner, voters suddenly acquired 20-20 vision of Tebow winning after Dixon’s ailing knee finally buckled.
Tebow’s 20-20 feat (he finished with 51 touchdowns — 29 passing and 22 rushing ) is remarkable, and someday deserves mention in a 618-page NCAA record book that contains no reference to the top dual-threat scorers in a single season.
(On the other hand, there’s a record for best per-game reception average by a tight end. It’s 9. 2, set in 1999 by Kentucky’s James Whalen. He wouldn’t have been among my top three choices to win the Heisman Trophy, either. )
I can hear some of you asking: How can a voter dismiss an achievement unprecedented for a quarterback ?
Easy. I simply typed in three names and submitted an e-mail to the accounting firm hired to tabulate the Heisman vote. Those names, in order, were Dixon, Arkansas running back Darren McFadden and Missouri quarterback Chase Daniel.
WENDELL BARNHOUSE, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Florida Gators fans have turned Tim Tebow into a larger-than-life icon. As a 6-foot-3, 235-pound quarterback trapped in a linebacker’s body, Tebow is as much a folk hero as a football hero. There’s a Web site called timtebowfacts. com that encourages fans to submit fanciful “facts.” For example: “Tim Tebow has never lost or tied a game of TicTacToe.” “ Superman wears Tim Tebow pajamas. ” “Tim Tebow’s hand is the only one that beats a Royal Flush.” “ Tim Tebow has counted to infinity... twice. ” “Life doesn’t give Tim Tebow lemons. Life asks him which fruit he wants.” Here’s an undisputed fact: Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy... as a sophomore. ‘OVERHEARD’ “I’m just thankful to be here again. I think my quarterbacking days are about to come to an end.” Arkansas tailback Darren McFadden, implying that he will likely enter the NFL Draft as a junior “Tim Tebow could run whatever offense he needed to run. We have to get away from system and style of offense. He’s just a great player. I’m so proud of him.” Florida Coach Urban Meyer “They always look for a flaw. I guess people don’t want to have a real American hero. Tim Tebow is the real American hero. He’s the real deal.” Craig Howard, Tebow’s high school coach at Ponte Vedra Beach (Fla. ) Nease By the numbers 881 Ballots cast 115 Ballots that did not list Darren McFadden first, second or third 77 Ballots that did not list Tim Tebow first, second or third 3 Heisman Trophy winners from the University of Florida: Steve Spurrier, Danny Wuerrfel, Tim Tebow 3 Players who finished second in the Heisman voting for two consecutive years: Army’s Glenn Davis (1944-1945 ), North Carolina’s Charlie Justice (1948-1949 ) and Arkansas’ Darren McFadden (2006-2007 ) 1 Player (Glenn Davis ) who won the award after finishing second the previous two years 7 Quarterbacks among the past 8 winners 26 Quarterbacks among the 73 winners in the award’s history 2 Defensive players who received first-place votes in this year’s balloting: LSU defensive tackle Glenn Dorsey (3 ) and Virginia defensive end Chris Long (1 ).
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