The most prestigious individual award in college football, the Heisman Memorial Trophy Award, has been awarded for more than seven decades to the most outstanding player in the game.
Nowhere in the classic text describing what the award stands for is there a stipulation that the winner of this award must come from an undefeated team, yet that seems to be almost a sub-category for those in the media who vote on this award.
Basically, there’s a message being sent to players that you must be on a winning team. Of course, football is a team game, in which contributions from the offence, defence and special teams are needed for a win.
Therefore, basing a player’s Heisman candidacy on what an entire team does over 60 minutes a game around 12 times a season is effectively turning the award into a team one, rather than an individual one.
I have a problem with this – a massive problem. Look into the world of college football at the moment and pinpoint the most outstanding player in the game.
Chances are, you’re going to point right at Johnny Manziel, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner.
The kid we know as Johnny Football, a polarising figure to be sure, is most assuredly a walking, talking highlight reel – both on and off the field. He’s one of few players whose every snap you watch with bated breath, because you know that there’s a good chance that something amazing is going to happen.
For the simple fact that the extraordinary seems to happen more often than not when the guy has the football in hand, Manziel should be a long way out in front of everyone else in the race for the 2013 Heisman.
Not just because he’s the clear leader in touchdowns accounted for (37, at last count) despite obviously being hobbled by injury at times, but because he is the most outstanding player on a football field this season.
No one can take over a game like Manziel can – and frequently does. Not Marcus Mariota in Eugene or AJ McCarron at Tuscaloosa or even Jameis Winston in Tallahassee. The scintillating Florida State freshman quarterback certainly comes the closest, and looks the most likely to steal Manziel’s mantle when the Aggie quarterback makes a move to the pros.
Yet, for the moment, Johnny Football is the undisputed King of Wow in college football. He’s the guy you tune in to watch every week.
Wowing people is what should win you a Heisman. But not, it seems, in the current climate.
What the Heisman voters are doing now, in determining the winner of the award for the single most outstanding player in the game, is effectively making it into a team contest. If a star player plays well but his team loses, that appears to be that as far as his chances of winning the award go.
Voters are penalising Manziel because Texas A&M’s defence is so porous that it’s shredded week in, week out by teams who aren’t exactly what you would normally call offensively prolific.
Manziel isn’t a linebacker or a safety or a defensive tackle. He’s not out there stopping the other offence. He’s forced to sit on the bench and watch a poor defence erode the good work he’s done on the field.
And, worse, he’s losing his Heisman because of it.
If anything, it should be the other way around. It’s certainly not a stretch to put forward the argument that, had it not been for Manziel’s freakish ability to generate big plays with regularity – and, particularly, big plays out of ones that seem to be going nowhere – the Aggies would be mired in the middle of the SEC, with more losses than they currently have.
When are the Heisman voters and the trust which controls the award going to return to the old days?
The dynamics of the award have changed recently, and I think it diminishes the heritage and prestige.
It should not have been turned into a be a contest fought out only by the best players on a team that’s run the table undefeated or who’s only lost to one very good team. It should be a contest fought out between the best, most electric and most outstanding – there’s that word again – players in America.
And Johnny Football leads that list. Regardless, the sad reality is that because Texas A&M’s 2013 season has ultimately been a disappointing one, due mostly to its defence’s inability to stop anyone, Manziel is, at best, sitting in third or fourth in line in most people’s ballot cards as we enter the final weeks of the season.
If Oregon’s Marcus Mariota hadn’t played so badly on Thursday night in Oregon’s loss to Stanford, Manziel might’ve been ranked even lower.
Talk of strength of schedule comes into consideration, which is why you won’t see me write an article about how Northern Illinois quarterback Jordan Lynch, himself putting up stupid offensive numbers, deserves a Heisman.
Same, to a lesser degree, with Baylor’s quarterback Bryce Petty or RB Lache Seastrunk – as much as I’d love to see all three of those guys in New York City.
You can’t argue with a straight face that Manziel isn’t running and passing rings around underwhelming defensive opposition. No, this is the Southeastern Conference we’re talking about, home to some of the best and most elite talent in America.
Manziel has made Alabama’s defence look downright silly two years running, and look what they’ve done to just about every other team they’ve played in that duration.
Certainly numerically, and in terms of the sheer number of big-time plays he made, I thought Manziel’s performance against Alabama this year was superior to last year, which is truly saying something.
He shredded them, but lost. He came back from an injury to nearly lead.
Yes, he’s turned the football over a little more this year, but the sheer fact of the matter is that his defence digs him a hole, and it’s taking speculative throws that, last year, with a better defence he simply wouldn’t have been called upon to make.
Therein lies the difference between a good defence and a bad one. A&M’s bad defence is penalising it’s star quarterback.
That’s why Johnny Manziel should be favourite to collect the Heisman Trophy in a couple of weeks, and make history with back-to-back wins of college football’s most prestigious individual honour.
Sadly, barring a cataclysmic series of upsets between now and Championship Weekend, he’ll be lucky to make it to New York City as a finalist.
Ironic, isn’t it, that Texas A&M’s defence, a collective unit, is going to mostly be held accountable for their quarterback not winning an individual honour that, by rights, the Aggie players not named Manziel, J. should have nothing to do with. Ironic and pretty unfair, too.
Based on the apparent criteria for the Heisman, I have a pretty strong feeling Florida State’s Jameis Winston will win the Trophy.
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