Last year sports bloggers collectively voted to award the first annual Sports Blogger's Heisman Trophy to (gulp!) Tim Tebow. Now once again we face the challenge of selecting one man from a handful of players to be recognized as the best college football player in the nation. Like the actual Heisman voting, points are awarded for first, second and third place votes. Here's my attempt at explaining my selections.
1. Ndamukong Suh, DT Nebraska - On a day where "Heisman Frontrunners" Colt McCoy and Tim Tebow were supposed to make their final statements of deserving the hardware it was Suh who stole the show and produced the most dominating performance college football fans have seen on national television in a long time. For the season Suh has 82 tackles, 23 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, 1 interception, 10 pass breakups, 24 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble and 3 blocked kicks.
2. Mark Ingram, RB Alabama - Like Suh, I had Ingram further down on my list until his performance last Saturday where he gave the second most impressive performance of the day. Against Florida he averaged 4 yards per carry on his way to 113 rushing yards and 3 touchdowns. You can also add 76 receiving yards to his tally and for the season he's been even more impressive with 1,542 rushing yards (6.2 YPC) and 15 rushing touchdowns.
3. Toby Gerhart, RB Stanford - He's been the workhorse for the Cardinal this season with 311 carries for 1,736 yards (5.6 YPC) and 26 rushing touchdowns. Unfortunately he's a bit overshadowed by not being able to participate in a conference championship game but his body of work in the regular season is impressive enough on its own.
Obviously Tim Tebow and Colt McCoy are missing from my list and as many will claim bias in leaving them off we really could debate if they deserve to be on the list or not until the end of time. At the end of the day their seasons weren't as impressive as these three and since the Heisman Trophy is not a lifetime achievement award but rather an award given to the most outstanding football player in a single season this was the result of the process. Thoughts?