So Who Do You Like?

That’s the big question being asked this time of year, whether it’s for the upcoming bowl games, the Heisman, or other player awards, and there seems to be as many awards as there are answers.

…SI.com is running an NFL-style 12-team playoff for college football, where you the people vote for the winner. Honestly, is it much different to have fans vote for the National Champion than the coaches or media? Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, and Alabama got first round byes. First round matchups are already done, with Penn State “beating” Boise State, USC destroying Virginia Tech, Texas Tech over Ohio State (I voted for the Buckeyes, but America strongly disagreed), and Utah got past Cincinnati.

…Is there more bowl games or “Player of the Year” Awards? Ok, number of bowl games beats it by a pretty wide margin, but did you know there’s THREE official unofficial National player of the year awards? Besides the Heisman, we also have the Walter Camp Award (who voted for Texas QB Colt McCoy) and the Maxwell Award (who voted for Florida QB Tim Tebow for the second straight year).

A better question might be, whose system for deciding the best is more screwed up- the BCS or individual awards? Before you say BCS, help me try and figure out how the NCAA can have multiple awards for the SAME POSITION voted on by completely different people. They had their official awards ceremony last night, which to me tells us absolutely nothing about who the best really was this year. This drives me freaking crazy, that not only do we not have just ONE award for the national player of the year, but we seem to have different voters for every award. And this doesn’t just apply to the Heisman or Walter Camp or Maxwell. College football handed out its “official” individual awards last night, and the insanity continued. Case in point is that USC linebacker Rey Maualuga was named the Defensive player of the year award, obviously he’d be named the best linebacker too right? Nope. That’s what you get for using logic in trying to name the winners for anything in college football. Not only is it insane that Maualuga can be named player of the year but NOT the best at his position, the guy who won the best linebacker award was not named James Laurenitis. Who won it? Somebody named Aaron Curry from Wake Forest. Seriously. If that’s not the biggest slap in the face the Big 10’s received all year, I’m not sure what is.

There’s also not one but two different awards given out by two different voting groups for best quarterback- and right on cue, they not only voted for different guys, neither of the were McCoy or Tebow. The Davey O’Brien award went to Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford and the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm award went to Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell. At this point, let’s just give every quarterback who starts a game this year an award. If you can get a famous college football name and give the NCAA some money, I’m sure you too can have an award and vote for whoever the hell you want!

They did at least get two awards right: The Doak Walker for best tailback went to Iowa’s Shonn Greene and the Biletnikoff for best wideout went to Michael Crabtree of Texas Tech. Those were so obvious even the NCAA couldn’t screw those up.

...Finally, the most overrated award in sports, the Heisman Trophy, will be handed out Saturday night in NYC. I realized that on the podcast I said I’d vote for Tebow and then by the end of my rambling explanation agreed with Jer that McCoy should win it. Let me clear it up by saying that while I do believe McCoy is the most deserving, I do believe Tebow will win it.