Just looked it up: since Ricky Williams in 1988, only two guys from three-loss teams have won the Heisman (RG3 and Tebow). Team success isn’t officially a prerequisite for the award, but at least in the modern era, it seems to have become one.
That actually came up earlier in this thread – although, TBCF, in Oregon, the signs read like “SPEED 55”, the word “Limit” does not appear on them (except in a very few rare places).
Can someone explain the Big 12 (top 3)? It doesn’t appear anyone in the Big 12 is any good, except the top 3 (Baylor, TCU and KSU) - all they all split with each other. None of them beat anyone of note outside their conference (Minn?) - how did they get ranked so high? The ranking may be correct, but it seems it is unknowable based on their schedules. They all also benefitted from not having to play any of the P5 conference winners in any bowl games (nor any runner ups (Conference Title Game losers)).
Mariota was actually only going 2 miles over the speed limit in that case. Later that night he hacked into the police systems and altered the records because he knew he had sped 2 miles over on 10 different occasion, so it seemed fair to make the ticket for 20 over.
In 2011 Russell Wilson had the all-time highest QBR, ran for a few hundred yards (I don’t recall exactly) and caught three passes for 60+ yards and a TD. Yet came in only ninth in the Heisman voting.
Hype is important as well.
Minnesota went in to the last game of the regular season against Wisconsin only needing to win to make the Conference championship. It was on the road and not a blowout so that win likely looked relatively respectable to the committee and pollsters. Baylor did get to play the divisional runner-up B1G divisional runner up in the form of Michigan State. Arguably, and the rankings supported people who aren’t complete homers like me thinking the same, MSU may have been the second best team in the B1G. Of course, Baylor didn’t win but it sure was a fight down to the wire.
There was a lot of weakness of schedule being talked about across the board as well for nonconference matchups. SOS of was an issue for a lot of the teams that were dominating their conferences and in the playoff conversation.
Except Mariota wasn’t hyped, at least not out of proportion to his performance on the field. Oregon offered to campaign for him like they did for Harrington, but he told them not to.
Of course ESPN hyped him the way they hype everybody who is playing in a game they’re showing, but since many of his games started at 10PM Eastern, he probably got less national exposure than most previous Heisman contenders, let alone winners.
But your stats on Wilson are impressive, so let me ask you, why do you think was he only 9th? Was there some anti-Wilson conspiracy?
He played for a big time program in a P5 conference, and his team was ranked in the top 20 all season, and in the top ten more weeks than not, and 9th while the votes were being cast. For comparison, RGIII won the Heisman that year with a team that was unranked for several weeks in mid-season (and as late as week 10), and was never ranked higher than 15th before the Heisman vote.
Wilson won the conference championship. He got Wisconsin into the Rose Bowl, which fortunately wasn’t played until after the Heisman voting, since he lost to (ahem) the Ducks. He was one of the pre-season favorites for the O’Brien and Maxwell awards. You can’t say he got less coverage than Mariota, especially considering the time zone thing.
And yet, as you say, he only finished 9th for the Heisman, and was the 75th pick (3rd round) in the NFL draft.
So what was the problem? I can see his height counting against him in the NFL draft, but the Heisman voters (ideally) vote on what he’s done, not his NFL prospects. I might think they penalized him for switching schools, but Cam Newton won it the previous year, so that can’t be it.
Seriously, what do you think?
No, it was all because Wilson is not tall enough to be a star QB. And that stint playing minor league baseball probably did not impress the voters.
Doug Flutie was shorter.
Flutie played football for Boston College. Wilson played football for NC State before transferring to Wisconsin, and he also played baseball, including, it seems, for (gasp) money. As he is on the football field, Wilson was all over the place and hard to pin down. I suspect the voters felt he was just not sufficiently dedicated to football.
And he was not tall enough.
What am I missing?
I’ve had ESPN on in the background while I work on year-end stuff (I work from home and year end is busy). All these pundits keep saying they favor Ohio in the championship game.
I watched the Alabama/Ohio game, and early, the Buckeyes struggled against Alabama – a team which I never felt played up to the Ducks’ level this year. (I would have loved to watch the Ducks roll out on The Tide.) Right up to the end of the first half, Cardel Jones had trouble settling and seemed unsure of how to handle the ball.
Ohio has some phenomenal players (loved that catch by Spencer as well as Jones’ throwing ability!) and I’m taking nothing away from that. Admittedly, I’m a relative neophyte to many of you commenting in this thread. But it seems to me that the Ducks just need to play their game – pressure Ohio’s quarterback and play their up-tempo offense… and that will be that.
Or… what am I missing? 'Splain, please?
The betting line opened with the Ducks seven-point favorites, and has now moved all the way to the Ducks being 6.5 point favorites, so it doesn’t seem like you’ve missed much. They’ve lost some of their best players to injury, but it seems like it would be a lot harder to adjust to losing your best receiver (and allegedly the fastest player in college) on the very first play of the FSU game, after probably having practiced a ton of plays that featured him, than to have 11 days to practice without him for the OSU game.
A better question might be, where is all the alleged pro-Oregon and pro-Mariota hyping that I’ve heard so much about on ESPN?
And if you don’t think the betting line is scientific enough, there’s this:
LOL, that was adorable – and if whizzing on the Buckeyes’ dish wasn’t poetic, well… I don’t know what would be. 
Thanks for posting that link!
4 more days of
This song has become fingernails on a chalkboard.This is even an argument? Who else could you possibly make an case for? Wisconsin was the only other B1G team even close in W-L record, and looking at their respective performances against Ohio State, plus the fact that Wisconsin lost to *Northwestern *(sorry, Wildcats) makes that choice look pretty clear. MSU’s narrow bowl win was also over a much better team.
This is very curious. I wasn’t paying close attention at the time, but Wilson’s statistics are indeed unbelievable. A cursory Google search doesn’t bring up any articles from 2011 protesting Wilson’s exclusion; all the coverage seems to have focused on the five players who got invited to NYC. Was it really just about his height? I mean, obviously a guy that short had no future in the NFL, but would the voters really penalize him for that?
This article is a rather dense statistical analysis which indicates that the game won’t be a walkover. I am making no predictions on this one, I think it will be a very tough game for the Ducks.
Well, you could say exactly the same thing about the Big Ten: three teams beat up on everybody else, and none of them had any good OOC wins (certainly none anywhere near as good as Minnesota). And yet, I would say that the evidence indicates that the best Big Ten team can compete with anyone in the country! I think you have to assume that any team which plays in a power 5 conference and loses only one or two games is pretty good, and certainly the elite Big 12 teams didn’t embarrass themselves in the bowls, with one blowout win and two close losses to quality opponents.
Of the top ten teams in the final regular season poll, only Oregon had an OOC win over a team that ended the season ranked. It’s actually pretty rare for a good team to have a quality OOC win, since many of them choose not to play any good OOC opponents, and half of the ones who do lose.
As if Oregon hadn’t lost enough of its top receivers, Darren Carrington, who had over 100 yards receiving against FSU, tested positive for pot, and will miss the title game.