Red Raider Gridiron | Press Conference Links

is too dumb to get what he is talking about. Obviously we know the what happens in practice (as Seth says). This guys intelligence is in question.

I just finished reading the DMN article. One negative of the myopic focus on “The play” is that it leaves the impression that we stole the victory from UT. That is very far from the truth. That game was a total beat down of the Horns. We beat them in every phase of the game, and lead for the first 58 minutes. If it wasn’t for a couple of long McCoy-Shipley completions the score would have reflected how we dominated them. Oh how I long to repeat the domination minus the UT face-saving bombs. WE. CAN. DO. IT! GUNS UP!!!

Hey, I’ve got an idea for idiots like Ubben, how about you (I dunno) DO YOUR JOB and research players and find out who is the BEST PLAYER IN THE COUNTRY. It’s not even that hard anymore (I want to note, there IS effort involved, but by mid-season you CAN limit the list down to a manageable number), what with the number of games being televised, the statistics available and of course, the internet. But no “Heisman goes to best player on top team” is short hand for “lazy journalism”. But since Seth linked his post, I felt compelled to read, and reading the moronity compelled me to do what people like Ubben (who get paid for this stuff) should do: research!

Using an (admittedly) arbitrary standard of 18 years (the start point is Miami’s ‘92 team which gave us Heisman winner Gino Torretta) I looked at Heisman winners. 2/18, or 11% were on teams outside the top 10 in the final AP & Coaches (or Harris if no Coaches) polls. One of the two, I think is indisputable: Ricky Williams of Texas. Williams was a beast and even though he’s been on and off in the pros, he earned his Heisman. The other? 2007 Tim Tebow. Now granted, Florida was top ten when the Heisman was selected (before they lost to Michigan in their bowl game), but it’s nice to know that we can overlook the “top 10” rule on a “magical” player on a “top” PROGRAM like Tebow. (Tebow was of course one of the “Chosen” three in 2008 also, altho granted his Florida team did much better in 2008)

Point being, in the last 18 years, the Heisman has had about 90% of winners from “Top 10” teams, giving us such luminaries as: Torretta (1992), Charlie Ward (1993), Chris Weinke (2000), Jason White (2003), and Troy Smith (2006).

Interesting information is if we look BEFORE the “Torretta-Top 10” age. So from 1991 to 1974 (again, arbitrary stop point selected at random as the first of Archie Griffin’s 2 years), another 18 years, but now the numbers shift. For this period, we have 7/18 Heisman winners for teams OUTSIDE the top 10 (39%), and of the players for teams IN the top 10, you get players like: Archie Griffin (74,75; only 2 time winner), Tony Dorsett (1976), Earl Campbell (1977), Billy Sims (1978), Mike Rozier (1983), and Doug Flutie (1984). And really, I don’t see any from the “in the top 10” list that I’d question. Couple this with the fact that if we only went with “top 10” players, Barry Sanders (1988), Bo Jackson (1985), Marcus Allen (1981), and George Rogers (1980) never win the Heisman trophy. (Rogers & Jackson played for teams that weren’t even ranked AT ALL, let alone the top 10 in the final polls of their respective years)

Going back a little further (through 1960, which was as far back as I wanted to research since the polls were grouped by decade), we have the period from 1960-1973. In this period polls were also much crazier (the page I looked at only had “top 10” for the AP poll for a few years, and 1971 had some WIDE variance on some teams (Heisman winner Pat Sullivan came from a team ranked #12 in AP and #5 in Harris), so for this one period I’m taking the stance of “outside the top 10 in AP poll”. By that standard, 6/14 (43%) of players that won the Heisman played for non-top 10 teams. And if we MERGE this data with the previous period, 13/32 or a flat 40 PERCENT of Heisman winners from before the “Torretta-Top 10” era were on non-top 10 teams. And again, winners who were IN the top 10 were the likes of
OJ Simpson (1968) and Roger Staubach (1963).

Two things I want to note, #1, Dave Ubben’s RIDICULOUS contention that the current system is good because Eddie George would not have won because he had 83 less yards than Troy Davis in 1995 is stupid. Sure stats count, but they’re not the WHOLE story and if voters thought that Eddie George was better than Troy Davis due to level of competition and intangibles, then that is a valid debate to have. But by ignoring that aspect and pretending that Troy Davis should automatically win simply for having great stats at a small school in an attempt to make a snarky point makes Ubben look like the prick that he apparently is. #2, I don’t think Danny Wuerffel is a great standard bearer for the “Top 10” argument, but if we’re gonna pick random examples, my personal favorite is Charlie Ward who QB’d a #1 Florida State team and then went on to be a role-player in the NBA.