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Entries in Heisman (157)

Sunday
Apr162006

Physical Genius: Bush, Carroll and Young

[Ed.---Advance warning, this entry is extremely long]

What is "Physical Genius"?

A concept of mine it is not, but I love it just the same.  Rather, it belongs to one Malcolm Gladwell, one of the more interesting writers and thinkers around.  Gladwell's the author of two much-hyped books: The Tipping Point and Blink.  Both are concept-driven books, although the principles behind them are entirely organic.  CFR loves concepts, so you had to know I'd sink my teeth into this topic.

Gladwell lays out his concept of Physical Genius in a New Yorker article he penned in 1999.  I stumbled upon it recently thanks to an entry about Vince young at Texas blog Burnt Orange Nation.

***My advance apologies to Mr. Gladwell and anyone else with a better understanding of the concept if I butcher it along the way***

The best way for me introduce Physical Genius is to throw some of the athletic names out there Gladwell asribed to it: Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tony Gwynn, Gred Rusedski and Jack Nicklaus.  In other words, some of the very best to ever play their games.  It applies to athletes and non-athletes alike (Gladwell joyfully documents the genius of musician Yo-Yo Ma and a particular neurosurgeon named Charlie Wilson), but for the sake of this discussion, we're narrowing the field to college football figures.

As is obvious above, one of those college football athletes is Vince Young.  I'll add my own thoughts about him later on in support of BON's petition, but I'd also like to offer two other candidates for status as Physical Geniuses (PG's)---Reggie Bush and Pete Carroll.

January 4th and the Rose Bowl was a significant and particularly rare intersection of three unique PG's at work, college football's equivalent of Halley's comet, perhaps.  But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Gladwell begins with some intentional vagueness in attempting to describe Physical Genius:

[PG's] all have an affinity for translating thought into action.  They're what we might call physical geniuses...

...The puzzling thing about physical genius, however, is that the closer you look at it the less it can be described by such cut-and-dried measures of athleticism.

He then enters a neurological dissection of why Tony Gwynn was so good at the impossible act of hitting a baseball.  Here is our first good piece of meat to chew on:

"Very good hitters base their decisions on past experience with certain pitchers, with the count, with the probabilities of certain types of pitches, with their own skills, and use very early cues in the pitcher's delivery to begin the swing," Janet Starkes, a professor of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, says.

What sets physical geniuses apart from other people, then, is not merely being able to do something but knowing what to do--their capacity to pick up on subtle patterns that others generally miss.  This is what we mean when we say that great athletes have a "feel" for the game, or that they "see" the court or the field or the ice in a special way.

Sounds simple, right? Enter Reggie Bush.

I remember watching recruiting highlights of his a few months before he committed to USC, and I was floored.  I'd seen plenty of tapes of recruits scorching high school opposition; even the stars at D-I bottom feeder scools have great highlight tapes.  However, this one was different.  Bush's speed was something to behold, but what really got me was his vision.  He was seeing things on the field better than all but a handful of players I've ever watched.  He could effortlessly put the moves on a defender, but it was apparent he was more apt to set a guy up, anticipating someone's reaction to his own momentum and finding a way to get around that defender and everyone else who would try and stop him.

We college football fans saw plenty of that over the next three years.  There were and are players faster than Bush, there are guys bigger than Bush, and guys with better moves and more elusiveness, but nobody is better than him at lining defenders up like chess pieces and navigating a course through all of them.

Think back to that famous run against Fresno State last November that probably won him the Heisman Trophy.  It was a mirror-image of the one O.J. Simpson had running through the UCLA defense in 1967.  Simpson's run has been replayed a million times over the years but never replicated---until Bush did the same exact thing.

his 8.7 yards/carry last year was no accident, but rather the sign of a rare player, one who could make common the most difficult of tasks for any back: the long run.

Gladwell continues-

This is the hard part about understanding physical genius, because the source of that special skill--that "feel"--is still something of a mystery. "Sometimes during the course of an operation, there'll be several possible ways of doing something, and I'll size them up and, without having any conscious reason, I'll just do one of them," [neurosurgeon Charlie] Wilson told me...

...When he talks about his extraordinary success as a surgeon, he gives the impression that he is talking about some abstract trait that he is neither responsible for nor completely able to understand.  "It's sort of an invisible hand," he went on.  "It begins almost to seem mystical.  Sometimes a resident asks, 'Why did you do that?' and I say "--here Wilson gave a little shrug--"Well, it juts seemed like the right thing."

When I read this passage, the first person I thought of was Michael Jordan.  Specifically, his NBA Finals game against the Portland Trail Blazers when he made six three-point shots, and after the sixth one retreated from the line, turned towards the announcer's table and friend Magic Johnson and shrugged, palms out.

jordanshrug.jpg


I've compared Bush to Michael Jordan before, but for different reasons.  However, the traits of Physical Genius probably vary little from one PG to another.  Wayne Gretzky's an original, but he probably varies little from Jordan in his performance capabilities.  The same holds for Bush, Young and Carroll.  All are cut from the same cloth.

Another trait Gladwell sees in PG's: compulsiveness.

To better explain this compulsiveness, he describes another neurosurgeon who was also a carrier-based pilot in the Vietnam war.  He was successful as a pilot, and as a neurosurgeon, because of his habitual ability to be a stickler.

[Neurosurgeon Don] Quest talked about what it was like to repair a particularly tricky aneurysm compared to what it was like to land at night in rough seas and a heavy fog when you are running out of fuel and the lights are off on the carrier's landing strip, because the skies are full of enemy aircraft.  "I think they are similar," he said, after some thought, and what he meant was that they were both exercises in a certain kind of exhaustive and meticulous preparation.

In other words, PG's often have compulsive personalities---they want to get things right and prepare diligently.  By all accounts, Bush is very much a practice warrior, and the man leading his practices runs one of the most unusual practices in all of D-I, coach Pete Carroll.

Carroll's practices are high-paced and concept-driven.  Guys aren't merely repeating drills but playing through to their purpose: there are competition Tuesdays and turnover Wednesdays.  The energy and commotion is legendary, but it also creates a chaos that demands a certain mental discipline to thrive in.  Because he can think quickly through a variety of situations, he demands the same of his players.

Vince Young fits in here as well.  Although I've never gotten the vibe that he's big on practice, his attention to the game and to details has sharpened immensely in the last year and a half.  When Texas began tinkering its offense to more adequately fit his physical gifts, he began to really hit the playbook and meet regularly with the offensive coaches.

He carried those habits into the offseason and up to this very day.  The proof is in the pudding: last year he completed oone of the greatest seasons by a passer/runner in college football history, led of one of the greatest offenses in college football history and won a stunning national championship victory over a team among the all time greats in college football and featuring two PG's of its own.

More on the personality traits-

Charles Bosk, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania... concluded that, far more than technical skills or intelligence, what was necessary for success [as a surgeon] was the sort of attitude that Quest has--a practical-minded obsession with the possibility and the consequences of failure...

...What this attitude drives you to do is practice over and over again, until even the smallest imperfections are ironed out.

This is where I'm a little more cautious about Young.  The Texas people will have to make a case for Young in their replies to this entry.  I said above he's improved his preparation habits, but I don't get the vibe that he's necessarily obsessive about them.

That is not a fear of mine with Bush or Carroll.  During the Heisman Trophy ceremony last year, there was a feature about Bush's training with NFL back LaDainian Tomlinson.  Tomlinson's among the NFL's best, and is also a practice nut.  He took Bush under his wings and worked the kid to exhaustion.  What that did was open Bush's eyes to a different level of preparation than he had known, one that a great back like Tomlinson had dedicated himself to.

It also built Bush's stamina and strength and transferred upon him a certain mental sharpness that elevated his play as evidenced by his remarkable improvement between his sophomore and junior seasons.  Bush couldn't have survived long in those workouts had he not also been dedicated to his own vigorous workout habits.  In that sense, his attitude is an internal one.  He's learned a different level of preparation, but he was already a guy similarly programmed to Tomlinson, who himself is similarly programmed like a Gretzky or Jordan.

As for Carroll, he is obessive about one thing above all else: the ball.  That's one of USC's silly slogans---"it's all about the ball".  Thing is, Carroll lives that reality.  He has created an entire program in that image, taking care of the football and more importantly, taking it away from his foes.  Not once has his team deviated from a superior brand of ball management.  His turnover margin numbers in his five seasons at Troy have been the following:

+16,+18,+20,+19,+21

Consistent, and remarkable.  No other coach or program is within several area codes of those numbers.  If there's one thing about turnover numbers it's that they tend to jump around.  There's even a section in the great Phil Steele preseason preview magazines titled "Turnovers=Turnaround" in which Steele documents how teams that are either +10 or greater or -10 or greater in turnover margin tend to rebound the next season with a reverse number that corrolates to that team's record swinging violently upward or downward.  Steele makes himself and a lot of followers a lot of money with that concept.  But Carroll's found a way to break that cycle and nobody else has.

If college football coaches are obsessive/compulsive (most are), than Carroll is king of the compulsives.

If the preceding helped to hash out some of the more nuanced physical attributes of Physical Genius, what follows dives headlong into the mental aspect.

Without further interruption, take it away Mr. Gladwell:

This kind of obsessive preparation does two things.  It creates consistency...more important, practice changes the way a task is perceived.

That perception involves the athlete breaking down the game situations before him into bite-sized pieces.  Gladwell borrows a psychological term to define that process: "chunking".

Our athlete example this time is hockey player Wayne Gretzky, the sport's greatest offensive force.

Like master chess players, he wasn't seeing all eleven other players individually; he was seeing only chunks.

From Peter Gzowski's "The Game of Our Lives" a book about the 1980-1981 Edmonton Oilers team:

What Gretzky perceives on a hockey rink is, in a curious way, more simple than what a less accomplished player perceives.  He sees not so much a set of moving players as a number of situations...

...Moving in on the Montreal blueline, as he was able to recall while he watched a videotape of himself, he was aware of the position of all the other players on the ice.  The pattern they formed was, to him, one fact, and he reacted to that fact.

When he sends a pass to what the rest of us appears an empty space on the ice, and when a teammate magically appears in that space to collect the puck, he has in reality simply summoned up from his bank account of knowledge the fact that in a particular situation, someone is likely to be in a particular spot, and if he is not there now he will be there presently.

Are alarms going off in your head right now recalling Vince Young's superb option run and pitch to Ramonce Taylor that turned into a Texas touchdown in this year's Rose Bowl?

I could provide many more examples but I'll save the bulk of the discussion for the last, most important part---the creative element of physical genius.

Towards the end of his essay, Gladwell returns to genius surgeon Charlie Wilson.  Wilson had added tennis to his list of interests at one point in his life, and worked hard to become good at it.  By Gladwell's account he was a quality player and put in the necessary effort, but couldn't beat some of his neurosurgery colleagues.  It frustrated him to no end.

And yet, for all his focus and determination, he could not respond effectively to an old man shuffling toward the ball twenty feet across the net from him.  "A good player knows where the ball is going," Wilson says.  "He anticipates it.  He is there.  I just wasn't."  What Wilson is describing is a failure not of skill or of resolve but of the least understood element of physical genius--imagination.  For some reason, he could not make the game come alive in his head.

Kind of like SEC football, lacking in imagination.  Kidding, kidding.  Alright back to Gladwell:

When psychologists study people who are expert at motor tasks, they find that almost all of them use their imagination in a very particular and sophisticated way.  Jack Nicklaus, for instance, has said that he has never taken a swing that he didn't first mentally rehearse, frame by frame.  Yo-Yo Ma told me that he remembers riding on a bus, at the age of seven, and solving a difficult musical problem by visualizing himself playing the piece on the cello.

You get the idea.  These Physical Genius types are superb at visualizing---they can create outcomes in their mind and then replicate them or recognize them when they occur in real life---and then react forcefully to them.

If you think of physical genius as a pyramid, with, at the bottom, the raw components of coordination, and, above that, the practice that perfects those particular movements, then this faculty of imagination is the top player.  This is what separates the physical genius from those who are merely very good. 

Michael Jordan and Karl Malone, his longtime rival, differ not so much in their athletic ability or in how obessively they practiced.  The difference between them is that Jordan could always generate a million different scenarios by which his team could win, some of which were chunks stored in long-term memory, others of which were flights of fancy that came to him, figuratively and literally, in midair.  Jordan twice won championships in the face of unexpected adversity: once, a case of the flu, and, the second time, a back injury to his teammate Scottie Pippen, and he seemed to thrive on these obstacles, in a way Karl Malone never could.

There's a lot to take from this last part, so let's break it into smaller chunks.

1)Although Gladwell harps at the propensity for bullheaded practice and repetition among PG's, they also have the capacity and willingness to deviate and create.

It isn't that [Yo-Yo] Ma doesn't achieve perfection; it's that he finds striving for perfection to be banal.  He says that he sometimes welcomes it when he breaks a string, because that is precisely the kind of thing (like illness or an injury to a teammate) that you cannot prepare for--that you haven't chunked and, like some robot, stored neatly in long-term memory.  The most successful performers improvise.  They create, in Ma's words, "something living."

2)Creativity is often revealed in how one compensates for adversity, how one adjusts and overcomes when things break down.  It is one's ability to "tap dance" that is a significant measure of Physical Genius, in other words.

Several Reggie Bush plays stick out in my mind as evidence of his ability to improvise.

1)In just his third college game, USC was playing Hawai'i at home.  Bush took a screen pass and darted to his right, only to encounter about five Hawai'i players.  I cannot begin to accurately describe what happened next, but it went something like this...

Bush jukes one defender into the sidelines, cutting inside and then hop-stops, facing one defender to the right, another to the left, another immediately to his left side and another a few feet back to his left backside.  He was literally boxed in.  In the next moment, he lunges forward.  The defender to his immediate left lunged to tackle him and he hops backwards nearly into the arms of a defender he'd just run by, watching the two men in front of him tangle themselves up.  Suddenly he's out of the box and completely reverses himself to the opposite side of the field to plenty of open space.

The Highlight [scan down the list to "2003 POY #10-Matt Leinart Block" It's a terrible replay angle but that's all I can find]

2)In a game USC nearly lost, Bush returns a punt against Stanford with USC down 28-24 in the 4th quarter.  Again, hard to describe.  Watch the replay below, it involved a lot of spinning and creative cuts.  The return had a hint of desperation given USC's predicament and was a sign to me that he was a guy who could  improvise when things got tense a la Michael Jordan.

The Highlight [scan down the list to Reggie Bush-Stanford 2004]

3)Reggie Bush's first touchdown run against Notre Dame this year.  Bush took a carry, paused for a moment, then ran through a gaping hole to his left.  Suddenly, as he cuts upfield, a defender stands in wait a few feet in front of him.  Bush didn't juke him, he didn't try and outrun him...he simply hurdled him.  Four seconds later and Bush has a touchdown.

I've TiVo'd that play a million times and still do not understand why or how it came upon him to hurdle the defender.  I don't know why the defender went to the ground, or how Bush knew he'd do that.  But he did... he did.

bushndhurdle.jpg 

For proof of his creativity (if those highlights didn't already do it for you), we turn again to the ubiquitous Heisman ceremony presentation.  In one of the segments about Bush, ESPN compared him to PG candidate Gale Sayers.  At one point his coach, Pete Carroll, said they had to find video of Sayers to show to the freshman Bush, and said something to the effect of "the thing that stands out about Reggie is his creativity, he's a creative runner like Gale".

One can't help but wonder if 1)Gladwell watched that Heisman ceremony and if he did 2)had a knowing smile while watching it. 

As far as his reactions to adversity, Bush clearly passes with flying colors.  He carried USC to several wins each of the last two seasons, and as noted before on here, played himself into literal exhaustion several times this season.

Enough about Bush though, let's take a look at Vince Young's creative side.  His brilliant option pitch in the Rose Bowl is an obvious highlight, but what's not so obvious is the genius of his throwing motion.

Please, pick your jaw back up from the floor, and let me explain.

Everyone and their uncle has mocked Young's throwing motion, and for good reason---it's not a traditional motion and comes across more as a flick than as a throw.  If you've seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite his motion is almost a mirror-image of the way Napoleon's annoying Uncle Rico throws a slab of steak.

But so what, it works!  Not only does it work, Young's nearly perfected throwing that way.  It allows for a stunningly quick and powerful release, yet one that's also unexplainably accurate.

The one concern would be that the ball's trajectory out of his arm will be cause for a lot of batted balls, but we simply have not seen that at the college level.  Don't forget Young's played behind some very tall linemen in his time at Texas, so if that were to be a problem it would have surfaced by now.

So why is the motion genius?  Because it's supremely effective and 100% original.  Nobody throws like that.  It's a creation of his own mind on to best throw the football.  Once again, Gladwell:

Ma says he spends ninety per cent of his time "looking at the score, figuring it out--who's saying this, who wrote this and why," letting his mind wander, and only ten per cent on the instrument itself.  Like Jordan, his genius originates principally in his imagination.  If he spent less time dreaming and more time playing, he would be Karl Malone. 

Young's clearly spent some time daydreaming and not just playing and it's clearly to his betterment.

Think Vince Young is the only PG with a completely unorthodox throwing motion?  Think again.  We don't even have to leave Vince's home state of Texas because PG candidate and Houston Astro pitcher Roy Oswalt has caught similar flak for his funky delivery.  From last week's ESPN the Magazine feature on Oswalt titled "The Simple Life" by Buster Olney:

Young Roy had seen enough to know that most pitchers start their delivery with one foot parallel to the rubber.  This made no sense to him.  He was trying to drive himself toward the batter, like a sprinter breaking out of the blocks.  Sprinters, he thought, don't plant their feet parallel to the starting line; their feet are pointed forward.

So that's how Oswalt designed his pitching mechanics, with his back foot, his right foot, angled slightly forward.  He raises his left foot, pauses slightly, then hurls his body at the batter, more like a javelin-tosser than a sprinter in the end.  Nobody else in the majors uses mechanics like these, and no pitching coach would teach them unless he was considering a change of profession.

But batters have confessed that Oswalt's motion can be unnerving, this wiry six-footer leaping at them like a mugger.  He throws 95, and the ball ambushes them.  "I can't think of anyone who can keep the ball on a low-line trajectory as well as Roy does," says Roger Clemens.  "Good plane with late life.  Nice combo."

Not everything's by the book in the path to genius.

The other aspect of Young's PG candidacy is his demeanor.  Other than Joe Montana, I have never seen a player more calm or at peace on the playing field than Young.  When I see him in the pocket, he's never rushed.  When he's running in the open field, it looks like he's about to take a gentle yawn in the middle of his runs he's so effortless and nonchalant.  That calm is the mark of a player who is ready for plays to break down, forcing him to improvise and become unfettered from the "chunks" that dictate conventional play.

I remember watching the Texas/Ohio State game last year, and there was a play where Ohio State had swarmed the Texas pocket.  The Buckeye defensive line forced Young to step forward, but he kept looking for a receiver until a linebacker was literally on top of him, trying to drag him down.  I thought to myself "this guy is in absolutely no hurry... this is amazing" before he finally got rid of the ball.

Before I go further, I'd like to thank Burnt Orange Nation for writing about this topic.  However, I felt they could have made a much stronger case for their Godsend quarterback.

Their entry boiled down to an impressive introduction to Gladwell's concept, and then analyzing his two factors for PG---physical and mental.  They heavily sidestepped the mental aspect, other than to criticize the NFL's Wonderlic test.  BON also somewhat sidesteps the NFL quarterback issue, but makes a superb case for their thesis of Young as a PG runner.

Anyone who has seen both Michael Vick run the football, then, might wonder why this is so. He is clearly the quickest and fastest runner at the quarterback position. Why does Vince Young excel at running, despite being, by all accounts, not quite as quick and not quite as fast?

This is where the experience of Texas fans can kick in. We have seen him make these runs for three years. He has an inexplicable knack for avoiding defenders, making cuts, and finding holes to run through. He does not just run fast and move quickly. He makes head-shakingly great runs, the success of which go far beyond any physical greatness he has. There is something more going on. It may be that Vince Young is a physical genius as a runner. Pete Carroll might think so, for one.

I've spoken before on here about how both Young and Bush are can't-miss NFL players.  They're simply too gifted, too much budding PG's to do anything but thrive in that league once they get acclimated. 

However, I also view them as "transition players".  Neither player fits a conventional mold. 

Bush's closest comparison is Marshall Faulk, but Faulk isn't as athletic and the league took a long time to figure out how to make great use of his skills.  Young has no comparison.  HP has called Young the true revolution and the more I think about it the more I agree.  But Bush is also a revolution.  He's going to make a case for nimble, lighter guys to play all over the offense, and colleges are already using his skill set as a way to recruit, telling players they'll be used like Reggie Bush.  Soon that kind of player may saturate the backfields of upcoming NFL drafts the way future DE's and rangy receivers may start taking snaps at quarterback instead of being converted to other positions early in their career as next generation Young-type quarterbacks.

Transition players can be considered ones that mark the beginning of a new era---think Magic Johnson and the oversized point guard, or Michael Jordan and the oversized combo guard/forward lineups created when he teamed up with Scottie Pippen.  Just the same I expect Bush and Young to mark a new era within the NFL, or at least become highly regarded players at the tops of their respective positions.

Onward to Pete Carroll.

Because he's not an athlete, I won't bother to show highlights documenting his physical gifts.  That's alright, because his mental gifts make a strong case for his status as a physical genius.

I've already discussed his practice demands, but there's more to the man than the practice field.  Carroll has a very active imagination.  Few football fans realize that he helped develop the modern Tampa/cover-two defense while serving as Monte Kiffin's defensive coordinator at North Carolina State from 1980-1982.  It is now one of the NFL's two most prolific and dominant defenses, making a home most notably in Tampa Bay and Indianapolis.

His defensive creativity has been on full display at USC in recent years.  Playing in the pass-happy Pac-10, he's employed a matador style, suckering opponents into unloading their playbooks and tossing the ball across the soft middle of the field.  His defense is designed to take away the deep zones and keep everything in front to control long gains.  It has the effect of keeping his defense on the field for a long time and surrendering many passing yards.  However, like a shark Carroll has set a trap in his defense.

With each passing play, with each passing possession, his defense sees more and more plays, letting his players connect the dots and start reacting to the chunks of data in their heads on how to prepare for opponents.  Eventually, they start jumping routes, batting down passes or intercepting the ball.  Carroll also uses math to his advantage.  He's recognized that so long as he has more talent on his defense than his opponent has on offense, he will win a lot of the short field battles.

The result is that opponents find it exceedingly difficult to score from about the 30 yard line in against his defense.  A shorter field means less room to operate an offense, and that's when his attack springs to life, taking risks despite having their backs to the goal line.

No coach willingly surrenders any field position if he has to, but let's just say Carroll has a backup plan for when things break down thanks to the creative scheme he's helped develop.  In other words, his defense is at its best when it faces adversity, when they are most threatened.

The best recent example of his defense facing adversity was the aforementioned Rose Bowl.  Vince Young's performance is well-documented, but what few people realize is that Carroll's defense had nearly done the miraculous that game.

The Trojan defense had limped into the Rose Bowl, missing a handful of starters with season-ending injuries and having several players suit up for the first time in several games.  Most weren't truly ready but went out there anyway (two of them had surgery immediately after the season ended).  Young managed a lot of yards that night, but with 5:00 left in the game, USC had held Texas' great offense to just 26 points.  I don't know how they did it.  Those last 5:00 they couldn't hold Young back any longer, but the miracle was keeping Texas' scoring machine at bay for that long with what little they had to offer that game.

It's not exactly Michael Jordan with the flu, but USC's defense really had one of those great efforts when things weren't going their way type days.  And all the credit in the world for that goes to Carroll.

My final Carroll anecdote relates to improvisation, and the world of possibilities.  I remember after this year's USC/Notre Dame game, someone had asked Carroll either on television or in one of the papers about what he was thinking about towards the end of the game when USC was on the ropes, its winning  streak hanging in the balance.  He said he wasn't worried or anxious, his mind was only thinking about the possibilities, trying to figure out what his players would do to win the game.  In that sense, Carroll is much like Ma, looking as a coach to create "something living".  He's done so by recruiting players like Bush and creating an environment for his players to do great things with games on the line.

In concluding this marathon of a blog entry, I'll deviate a bit from Gladwell for my own football thoughts.  This entry was about Gladwell's Physical Genius, but it was also about the unique talents of Reggie Bush, Pete Carroll and Vince Young.  We were all a little fortunate as college football fans to see those three collide on January 4th in Pasadena's Rose Bowl for this year's BCS national championship.

A casual observer reading this entry before the game would probably have chosen USC as the game's winner.  They had the PG numbers advantage over Texas, 2-to-1.  The game was a home game for all intents and purposes.  They were the team with the 34-game winning streak.  They were the defending champs.

And they lost.

Here's a simple guess as to why: Vince Young had the ball in his hands on every offensive snap for Texas.  Pete Carroll could control who got the ball, but he was not on that field.  Reggie Bush would total 24 touches of his own, but yet he could not influence the game the way Young could simply because of his position.  So at the end of the day, two great Physical Geniuses had their fate handed to them by one single Physical Genius.  He had the ball the most often... he had it last.

Friday
Apr142006

Pfffft

If you've read CFR for awhile, you're well familiar with the whole scheduling and SEC myth argument coming out of here.

I won't dig too deeply into any of it again, but I will be up-to-date and post a few links here of the argument being extended into 2006

The combatants:

EDSBS and Notre Dame blog The House Rock Built.

The material:

The argument:

  • THRB-The SEC's obsessive quest for all games to be played within a minute's walk of their homes and to beat up on the area undercard equivalent instead of taking the game on the road against foes who can hit back.
  • EDSBS-The money, the money, the money, it's all about the money.

The problem:

The "money" argument is a crutch.  The SEC is isolated as the most committed conference to a scheduling scheme that involves little travel, regional cupcakes and great hype.  It's made the conference rich but is also doing the game a severe injustice and reaping greater than deserved rewards.

If money was everything, all the other major conferences would have followed suit.  Instead, the Pac-10 and the Big Ten have (with some exceptions) continued their rigorous beyond-the-borders scheduling approach, along with the ACC and Big East to a lesser degree.  The Pac-10 is considered a weak sister, but historically the Big Ten is neck-and-neck with the SEC for college football wealth and prominence.

In other words, something's amiss.

EDSBS's justification is that teams like Notre Dame historically had to barnstorm to get respect, as did USC, but that's no longer the case and both programs are much more regarded in both the present and historical context than all but one SEC team: Alabama (forming college football's Holy Trinity).

That argument fell apart in the 30's for both Notre Dame and USC as both won several mythical national championships and jumpstarted the nearly eight-decade rise to prominence for both programs.  At this point both continue to schedule aggressively because their athletic departments seek competitive football games, the rewards of which extend beyond the short-term monetary gain.  Both programs have left championships on the table by taking on their schedules over the years, but here's guessing that neither feels to bad about that.

To incorporate MGoBlog's Heisman logic linked to earlier, it's like the slave has become the master with the scheduling gimmicks inherent in the SEC:

Faced with a game of stark military aggression, Nietzsche would probably see two kinds of players: those who respond out of fear and those who impose their will on things. Meatheads call the latter "swagger." Nietzche would see masters and slaves

Ohio State taking on Texas, Notre Dame taking on USC, etc. is certain teams not responding out of fear, but imposing their will on things.  They were attempting to become master.  Someone is bound to lose those games, but there's always the next year for the loser, another opportunity to break those shackles and convert from slave to master.

The problem with the SEC way is that it's an end-around to becoming master without the necessary personal bloodshed.  It's the sniper's bullet instead of the concussed slugfest with the neighborhood bully.

Friday
Apr142006

Only the Blogworld Would Attempt This

Captain Cranky MGoBlog goes Nietzsche on the Heisman.

I was recently reviewing some literature on last year's Heisman and came across something interesting said by USC coach Pete Carroll.  I've noticed over the years that despite three Heisman trophies Carroll has had little input on the process and has abstained from any real campaigning.  But afterwards he's quick to celebrate the thing.

Anyway, his take was something along the lines of that the award "singles out a particular player for that season" and that he's felt honored to have had his guys singled out in those three particular seasons.

Maybe that's what the award, in a very indirect way, is about.  At least that's how many of its choices can be viewed upon reflection.  It doesn't always go to the best guy (Weinke? White?) but it does go to a well-regarded college football player, someone that a group of voters was comfortable with as being their representative for the greatest individual award in all of sports.
Thursday
Apr132006

Out of the Mothballs

Michigan blogger Stadium and Main is doing a rundown of relevant games in recent Michigan football history.ย  The latest entry is about the tense matchup with #15 Iowa during the 1997 championship season.

Check it out for an impression on the dominance of that Michigan defense over the Big Ten.

What got my attention, however, was this name: Tavian Banks.ย  Remember him?ย  That guy was goooood.ย  He wasn't much of an NFL'er, but for a small college back he was F-A-S-T and productive.tavianbanks.jpg

Things picked up in the 2nd quarter, with Iowa RB Tavian Banks starting the scoring on a 53-yard TD run with 13:29 left in the quarter. It should be noted that if Iowa had won this game, Banks might have been a legitimate Heisman candidate, as he went over 1,000 yards on just his 125th carry of the season (an NCAA record for โ€œfewest carries to break 1,000 yardsโ€)

Ridiculous.ย  I remember back then thinking that Banks had one of the most impressive starts to a season, ever.ย  Thing is, he did it against a slate of: Northern Iowa, 2-9 Tulsa, 1-10 Iowa State, 0-11 Illinois and 10-3 Ohio State---a series of five games that would net Iowa four wins and a scoring average of 46 points/game.ย  Watered down competition, for sure, but I'm still impressed.

Tuesday
Mar282006

HP's back

Yay.

He decided to give deference to that silly basketball tournament... I can't blame him too much though, he's got basketball bloodlines.

Here's his latest, along with an interesting next month look-ahead at HP.

Good to see the Guru of the Stiff Arm Trophy back in action.

ByTheWay, anyone catching a whiff of Brady Quinn backlash already?  I can't help but wonder if Heisman voters don't pick up a little of that anxiety and hold Quinn to a little more scrutiny than previous preseason favorites. 

Tuesday
Mar212006

The College Football Mix Tape

This entry is inspired by the movie High Fidelity.  My apologies in advance.

The movie High Fidelity was on TV twice last week, and in keeping with the John Cusack theme on here, I'm inspired to connect a movie in some way to college football via the CFR blog.  For those who haven't seen it, the movie stars John Cusack as a music savant and record store owner who has a midlife crisis and undergoes this drastic revisitation of some old relationships he's had.  The interesting thing about him is that he's got a "Top Five" list for practically everything; breakups/exes, favorite songs, things he likes about the current girlfriend and so on.  Towards the end of the movie he goes about making a mixed tape to play for his current squeeze, and get into the art and nuance of it all, including what songs to choose, what order to put them in, and the reasoning behind those choices.

At that point my mind started to wander, thinking about a much less serious or profound mix tape for college football.  To make things easier, I narrowed my thoughts down to "Mixed Tape for College Football of the Early and Mid 2000's".  It's specific, and covers a time period all but the youngest college football fans are familiar with.  It's contemporary and still fresh in our minds.

What follows is the list of "tracks" I'd have on my college football of the early and mid 2000's tape.  Feel free to contribute your own tracks, this is by no means comprehensive or thoroughly combed over.  It's meant to be lightly thought-provoking and interactive.  Here are the tracks:

  • Oklahoma/Florida State BCS title game

A surprising outcome, and marked the beginning of an Oklahoma resurgence under Bob Stoops to start this decade off.  Oklahoma completely throttled the Florida State offense, nearly pitching a shutout and killing the Heisman credibility of Seminoles' QB Chris Weinke (who narrowly beat out Oklahoma's Josh Heupel for the award).

  • Miami/Ohio State BCS title game

The Buckeyes stunned the world.  It was a dramatic game, including the appearance of a miffed Maurice Clarett, the horrible knee injury to Willis McGahee and that oh-so-controversial pass interference call.  Cemented Ohio State's legacy as the "Luckeyes" with yet another close victory in their 14-0 season.  Also stopped the Miami mini-dynasty.

  • USC/Oklahoma BCS title game

A visually stunning performance.  Oklahoma scrapped its way to a touchdown on a few busted plays, and then the USC offense and defense woke up.  That USC team was perhaps the best single-game football team in many years, if not the game's history.

  • Texas/USC BCS title game

Vince Young.  Reggie Bush.  Matt Leinart.  The Rose Bowl.  A thoroughly dramatic affair, one that wasn't resolved until the final :19 seconds.  Even then, USC got its offense past midfield in a desperate final push.  Like Ohio State, Texas put a halt to USC's 34-game winning streak.

  • Mike Price and the Alabama coaching carousel

The head coach job at Alabama is one of the game's most prestigious positions.  It's also a tough position of late, as the fans are title-starved and frustrated with the burdens of NCAA sanctions and the rise of bitter rival Auburn.  Almost immediately after his hiring, Price went on some kind of hyper-testosterone golf trip that involved strippers, credit cards, alcohol and God know's what else.

This wasn't far off the resignation of Dennis Franchione, who left the Tide high and dry for Texas A&M.

  • Alabama recruiting mess

Ahhhh, Albert Means.  This story was the vindication of all that is wrong with recruiting and SEC fans' hyper-involvement in the sport.  It's now been revealed that Tennessee coach and Alabama rival was one of the NCAA's main informants in bringing Alabama down.  This story is of high symbolic value to many who follow the game.

  • Offensive revolution

Love 'em or hate 'em, these schemes are here and are all the rage.  Spread, Norm Chow offense, sophistication, all that.  I don't deny that the game is in constant flux and defenses will adjust and then offenses will re-adjust---simply noting that the offenses are here now, and doing good things.  Money talks: the spread and offensive-driven coaches are getting hired.  Mike Price before his little inbroglio.  Steve Spurrier again.  Urban Meyer.  And that's just in the SEC.  Last year's Rose Bowl featured two of the 15 best offenses in NCAA history.

  • 2003 BCS Fiasco

Yes Virginia, split titles were not done away with despite the creation of the BCS.  Don't think that created much of a divide?  One word: Onepeat.

  • Mike Williams

Although he hasn't become a revolutionary player, his personality and on-field dominance caught peoples' attention.  The one-handed grab against Oregon State is forever replayed.  Symbolic of USC's resurgence.

  • Maurice Clarett

He played one year of college football.  One!  And yet he's talked about to this very day.

  • Reggie Bush

If you follow recruiting, you know every single program pitches to backs, quarterbacks, receivers, whoever can run, that they'll give him a "Reggie Bush" role.  He's become the symbol for offensive versatility and explosiveness.  Two titles, and a Heisman trophy and will probably be the #1 pick in the upcoming NFL draft and a good kid to boot.  Not bad.

  • Joey Harrington and the billboard

His Heisman campaign fizzled, but the promotional billboard in New York City generated tremendous buzz and gave Oregon a little more national attention.

  • Oklahoma's ownership of Texas

Until last year, of course.  Before Vince Young was Vince Young, Texas was Oklahoma's gimp.  The Red River shootout had become the symbolic divide between the two programs and their coaches, Bob Stoops and Mack Brown.  Stoops was the winner, the self-assured and proven coach who could back up his team's hype with a BCS title and several BCS title game appearances.  Mack Brown was the great recruiter who couldn't get it done.  Or so they wrote.  Few will forget the play where Texas was backed up in its end zone, Chris Simms set to throw a pass and Oklahoma safety Roy Williams going superfreak and literally flying in the air to get a piece of the ball, redirecting it to teammate Rocky Calmus who caught it and walked in for the demoralizing defensive touchdown.

That's my list, what would you add?

Tuesday
Feb212006

Six Comforting Things About College Football

  • Saturday is an all day affair
The majority of each week's college football schedule falls on Saturday.  On any such Saturday, there may be upwards of 50 games played, staggered from early morning to well past midnight (when you factor in time zones).  If you're tailgating, you may very well have arrived at the stadium several days before, or at least many many hours before kickoff.  If you're watching from home, the games start as early as 8 or 9 a.m. on the West coast (and earlier for fans living in Hawai'i), and end late Sunday morning if you're living in the East.

  • Keith Jackson

I'm not sure if he's officially retired or not, but the man was and is a great face for the game.  It's obvious by now that he's nowhere near the top of his game, but it's not all that bothersome when one considers his career and continued domination of wannabe contemporaries.  Like few other broadcasters, Jackson has a memorable, timeless, and beautiful voice.  He's been a loving caretaker for the game, and given his best for God knows how many years.  He's put in his time and remains capable of setting the scene before the game better than anyone else in the business.

  • Preseason Magazines

Inevitably I'll sound like a hypocrite in a few months when I shred the collective nonsense that is written in the glossies.  All is forgiven, however, because they're part of most fans' preseason ritual.  They send a message of hope and the inevitability of another great season when they appear on newsstands sometime during the summer.

  • Every Game Matters

Have you ever noticed how meaningless regular season NCAA basketball games can be?  That isn't the case for college football, nor should it ever be.  Penn State's miracle comeback against Northwestern last year had a great impact on the 2005 season.  So did Georgia's victory over Boise State.  So did Ohio's win over Pittsburgh.  Every game tells a story, connecting each team in some way.  There are no isolated incidents in college football when the season is so swift and the tension high.  It sends the message that each team is accountable for its own fate, that there are consequences that a tournament bail-out cannot remedy.  I love it!

  • Meaningful Rivalries

All sports have their rivalries, but few can match those in college football.  Yeah, Yankees/Red Sox is heated and deeply rooted in history (they sold The Babe!), but ask any Alabama fan what he thinks about Tennessee and you'll know you're on a completely different level when it comes to college football.  Even the more benign rivalries are thrilling.  Who doesn't get a kick out of a psychotic kicker hoisting Paul Bunyan's Axe or Florida State's addiction to Wide Right?  It is because the game has been played so long, and the passions so strong, that we have this great sport to celebrate.

  • The Heisman Trophy

Love it or hate it, it's the greatest individual award in all of sport.  Steeped in history, conquered by the average and the almighty, it's a most recongnizeable trophy and adds great prestige to each and every athlete and school lucky enough to be one of it's recipients.

Saturday
Feb112006

Headline Good, Rest Not So Good

Here's an article from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dated July 31, 2005 titled:

Commentary: You want my vote?  I vote for the old, simpler bowl system.  By Furman Bisher, Cox News Service.

I'm feelin' kinda Fisky, so let's take a look at this.

Well, I should have felt honored. Where else but in America is an old dude such as I invited to pass judgment on college football teams?

Nice gig.

Where else, of course, for only in America do colleges mix football with education. In fact, during the autumn months you can barely detect education beneath all the clamor of football, which hangs over the campus like a gathering storm.

You clearly enjoy your role as writer and social critic.  Clamor, gathering storm... oh, the imagery.

Once upon a time, college teams were invited to play in bowl games, reserved only for top-grade teams with the craftiest athletics directors. Bowl sponsors went for the teams they wanted, invited them and it was done.

First assertion of fact from which follows the main argument.

Some used to say that the bowl picture was never sorted out until Bear Bryant decided which way he was going, then everything else fell into place. It was that simple. Bowls did business with the colleges, the colleges made the best deal they could, alumni got in line for tickets and made their reservations, and the game was on.

It sounds so romantic and idyllic.

"Get your best holt" was the advice athletics directors got, and the most industrious ones got their best "holt."

Ok.

Bowl games were named for fruit, flowers, sweetening or in one case, even the sun. Now they're named for tires, credit cards, steakhouses and cellphones. Anything marketable.

You forgot the Salad Bowl.  To be serious for a moment, the new names are annoying and have stricken from memory some more identifiable bowl names.  But that's part of the cost of doing business in America.  I'm not shedding any tears.

The other major change is how the bowls and the teams get together, which brings me around to the Bowl Championship Series, or BCS, as it is best known. The whole process is determined by polls, and there have been polls of all sorts, media polls, coaches polls, computerized polls and a new one this year, known as the Harris Interactive College Football Poll.

Here comes the second argument thrust.

The Harris poll has been in the business for years, polling everything that can be polled. This is Harris' first bold venture in the football field, and I use the word bold advisedly. When you start voting on things having to do with college football teams, you'd better have a thick skin and a strong defense.

Nice finish, even if it's cliche-ridden and contrived given the subject matter.  But a good, tangential point is made regarding the frenzied nature of public decisionmaking such as voting in the world of college football.

The other day I had a very official letter inviting me to be one of the pollsters. "You have been nominated to be part of this group, and your participation is important to the success and statistical balance of the poll results," I was told.

Sweet.

Enough to make your chest swell, especially for one who has been out of the polling business since Ronald Reagan was president. In fact, I was once chairman of the NCAA media committee that assigned colleges to the division in which they performed, based on strength of schedule. That was easy.

Hopefully you were there trying to put a brake on the super-expansion of Division I into the current 117 (119?) team monster that it is.

For the longest time, I was one of the voters who decided who won the Heisman Trophy. When the Downtown Athletic Club sold out to television, yet relied on the media to do the voting, that was unsavory enough. But when the show was sold out to the people who make whatever Suzuki makes, that did it. I didn't choose to participate in a vote to determine Japan's college football player of the year.

Now isn't this a bit dramatic?  HP, have any thoughts?

To play ball in the Harris poll means you must get a bellyful of football on television

Check.

until they turn the lights out on the West Coast

This almost did in Reggie Bush's Heisman campaign.  See: State, Fresno.  Luckily the public made like that elementary game of "telephone" where an initial message is whispered from person to person until it arrives back at the original messenger, completely disfigured.  Last I heard Bush had gone from running for 295 yards to taking down that horrible beast Grendel.

Until Washington State is through playing UCLA

Fantastic game.  Seriously, I hope Harris voters saw it.

It means you get up Sunday morning and start putting together all the scores

Or doing your level best to watch as many games as possible Saturday, and staying awake the extra few hours to cheerfully fulfill a responsibility.

a lot of the games over too late to make the morning paper, and you rate the teams

In this era, there's no excuse to be voting based on whatever's published in the morning papers.  Either you care and watch (or gametrack, etc.) as many games as possible, and you are concerned about fairness to give every team their due, or you aren't.

Lee Corso, the untaciturn voice of ESPN, said the other day, "I don't vote on these things. I don't know how good Oregon State or Texas Western is."

That's damning.

That pretty much tells the story of just how reliable a college football poll can be.  You fire from the seat of your pants.  You pick by what you read and hear and seldom see — like, for instance, I never saw Alex Smith throw a football last season. Now he's a multimillionaire San Francisco 49er.

It doesn't have to be that way.  It shouldn't be that way.  I'm not a voter, but I go to pretty great lengths to watch as many games as possible every week.  It's easy to do if you care.  I understand many AP voters are beat writers and have little time to deviate from their team and its opponent, but what about those involved in the Harris poll?  Nobody's asking for perfection, only a respectable effort and hopefully an independent and informed voter.

And if you didn't see a single Alex Smith pass two seasons ago, you're not much of a college football fan and shouldn't be anywhere near the game's power apparatus.

Well, it was nice of HICFP. But the decision was easy: There's a rule at our paper that we don't vote on any kind of poll, and that took care of that.

Saved by the bell. 

Saturday
Feb042006

Nice job, HP

For laughs I've been reviewing some of my earlier blogging efforts here at CFR.

A mere week into into dot-com existence, I was talking about the Heisman trophy.  Here's an entry about HP's "Heismandment No. 7"-Heismandments, Extrapolated.

Here was the Heismandment:

7. If you are a quarterback or running back at the following schools, you have a good chance to win if you have a very good statistical season, are an upperclassmen and your team wins at least 9 games: Notre Dame, USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State, Michigan, Miami and Florida State. These 9 teams have won 10 of the last 13 Heismans and six of the last seven.

Here was CFR's "no duh" analysis:

Well, if that holds like it did last year, here are the candidates who can win the Heisman from those schools:
  • Notre Dame-Brady Quinn
  • USC-Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White
  • Texas-Vincent Young, Selvin Young
  • Oklahoma-Paul Thompson
  • Nebraska-Joe Dailey, Cory Ross
  • Ohio State-Troy Smith, Justin Zwick
  • Michigan-None
  • Miami-Tyrone Moss
  • Florida State-Wyatt Sexton, Leon Washington, Lorenzo Booker
It is very likely one of these 15 athletes will win the 2005 Heisman Trophy. Scary, but true.

HP's rule got it right, naming the eventual winner and also naming the entire field of finalists and 4 of the top 5 finishers, only neglecting 5th place finisher Michael Robinson, the Penn State quarterback.

Note that I referred to the Heisman runner-up by his more formal name, Vincent.  Man I'm a nerd.

Anyway, let's extrapolate on the extrapolations, shall we?  Below are the same programs, with their new Heisman trophy candidates for 2006.  This should be fun to review in oh, 10 months.

  • Notre Dame-Brady Quinn, Darius Walker, Travis Thomas
  • USC-John David Booty, Hershel Dennis, Chauncey Washington, Desmond Reed
  • Texas-Ramonce Taylor, Selvin Young
  • Oklahoma-Paul Thompson, Adrian Peterson, Jacob Gutierrez
  • Nebraska-Zac Taylor, Brandon Jackson
  • Ohio State-Troy Smith, Justin Zwick, Antonio Pittman
  • Michigan-Chad Henne, Mike Hart
  • Miami-Kyle Wright, Andrew Johnson, Tyrone Moss
  • Florida State-Lorenzo Booker, Jamaal Edwards, Lamar Lewis

It's February, but I don't hold high hopes for this field---Quinn, Peterson, Wright and Booker show the most Heisman promise.

References:

***

Previous:

Also:

Thursday
Dec292005

No surprise, Brady Quinn to return

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2006 Heisman Trophy front-runner.  Get ready for the preseason rush of magazine covers, feature stories, gimmicky websites and merchandise.

Saturday
Dec102005

2005 Heisman Trophy presentation live blog

Ok here we go.

I'll update this as the ceremony goes along, feel free to contribute in the comments section below. 

Saturday
Dec102005

A reminder

I will be live blogging the Heisman ceremony tonight, so join me at 8 PM Eastern as I react to the show's proceedings.  It is being televised on ESPN.

Saturday
Dec102005

CFR's 2005 Heisman Ballot

I'm not a Heisman voter.  I'd love to have the honor of being one.  Someday perhaps.

CollegeFootballResource.com's 2005 Heisman Ballot

  1. Reggie Bush, USC-I chose Reggie Bush as my Heisman winner last year.  I don't think there's been a player like him in the college game in some time.  Long ago I got over drooling at his highlights, because I see something far greater than those.  I see a ferociously competitive football player, a guy who works hard to put himself in a position to do the great things he does.  He's bailed USC out of a lot of close games in two seasons now, to the point where it's almost commonplace.  They include superhuman shows against Virginia Tech, Stanford, Oregon State, UCLA, Oregon, Arizona State, Notre Dame and Fresno State.  Furthermore, I think the Heisman trophy has evolved to where a player like Reggie Bush becomes a can't-miss Heisman choice.  He's Desmond Howard meets Barry Sanders meets God, if that makes sense.  And he was my easy choice for #1 on the 2005 CollegeFootballResource.com Heisman Ballot.
  2. Michael Robinson, Penn State-I dogged him earlier in the year for not being much of a quarterback.  That's ok, he proved to be that much more the team leader.  Robinson willed Penn State through some tough Big Ten games this year, and left their only loss, against Michigan, with the lead.  When challenged, Robinson always answered with a big play and Penn State now has a very well-earned Big Ten title to celebrate.
  3. Elvis Dumervil, Louisville-This one's kind of a surprise.  Once in a while a defensive player comes along and puts up numbers that don't even make sense.  Dumervil had 20 sack and 10 forced fumbles.  10!  The Heisman Trophy is awarded to college football's most oustanding individual athlete.  I think Dumervil certainly qualifies to be on a lot of ballots if that's the case.

Before you throw a fit on two guys I left off, I'll give you my reasons:

  • Why no Vince Young?  Good question.  For me, it boiled down to this-Texas' schedule was so easy this year Vince Young never really had much of a challenge after the Ohio State game.  The softness of the schedule is not his fault, and I don't hold that against him.  However, his body of work just didn't jump out once I had some time to reflect upon things.  I think back to the Ohio State game, and how the Buckeyes figured out Young's zone read runs after his first handful of long runs.  After that, he was completely shut down and almost coughed the game up twice, throwing a bad interception and averaging just two yards a carry after the first scoring drive.  He did lead Texas down the field on the last scoring drive, however.  The Oklahoma State game was never in doubt, and on his memorable run there was simply nobody there to even attempt a tackle on him.  He looked completely dazed while playing Texas A&M, as well. Vince Young gets a lot of points for leadership and changing the fortunes of an oft-criticized Texas team, and taking them to a 12-0 record.  However, I just never got that Heisman feel from him.
  • Why no Matt Leinart? Another good question.  The Heisman Trophy isn't a career award.  I felt Matt Leinart was far more impressive last year, guiding USC through a rough schedule behind a new offensive line and new receivers.  This year, he had every tool available and put up fine numbers.  However, aside from the stunningly perfect night against Arkansas and the historic final drive against Notre Dame, Leinart wasn't quite the same player this year.  USC turned to Reggie Bush and LenDale White quite often this year.  Perhaps it was the hit he took against Arizona State early in the year, but there was a several-game stretch where Leinart was in a bit of a fog and didn't appear to be at full faculties to where he could do little more than hold things together instead of leading his team (the burden fell upon Reggie Bush, who obviously delivered).  There is no doubt in my mind that Matt Leinart is the best quarterback in NCAA history, but this year he wasn't particularly Heisman-like in CFR's eyes.
I realize my Heisman updates throughout this season consistently listed Vince Young and Matt Leinart.  As I stated several times, those lists were made more to reflect the Heisman realities than to reflect my own views.  I took some time to reflect upon my choices here, reflecting upon the body of work of the entire 2005-2006 college football season.  As such, this list isn't merely the reaction to last week's games, but to an entire season by a handful of great individual football players.  Hope this clarifies things some.
Saturday
Dec102005

Regional analysis

Two weeks ago this post would have been more relevant, and because there is little drama in tonight's show, I'll explain why Reggie Bush would have won the Heisman even without bonkers performances against Fresno State and UCLA.

To have an understanding of Heisman outcomes, it helps to look at how the various Heisman regions perform, and extrapolate that onto a slate of candidates.

CFR's expected revisionist Heisman region outcomes (top five candidates) assuming Reggie Bush hadn't gone nuts against Fresno State and UCLA and both he and Young quietly finished their seasons:

  • West-Bush,Young,Leinart,Olson,Quinn
  • Southwest-Young,Bush,Leinart,Quinn,Robinson
  • South-Bush,Young,Leinart,Quinn,Robinson
  • Mid Atlantic-Bush,Young,Leinart,Robinson,Quinn
  • Northeast-Bush,Young,Leinart,Quinn,Robinson
  • Midwest-Bush,Young,Quinn,Leinart,Robinson

 That's 5 out of 6 Heisman regions for Reggie Bush, a solid win.

Here's how it would have happened:

  • Vote doctoring out West-In any year it happens.  A region's home candidate not only gets first place votes, his rival ends up third or left off ballots.  This certainly would have happened in the Southwest in Young's favor, but the Western voters are particularly notorious for this.  Simple math dictates that Reggie Bush would run away out West, while also eating into Young's Southwest cushion because very often we'd see a Western ballot go Bush-Leinart-Young or Bush-Olson-Young whereas in the Southwest it's a risky proposition to have Bush any worse than second.  Bush gains votes using this practice and it would have been possible in a close race because ...
  • Loaded slate of candidates out West-Because there are over 900 Heisman voters, there's very little criticism when voters play homer and put someone like a Jerome Harrison or Drew Olson or Brodie Croyle high on their ballot.  This year, the Western region had a plethora of candidates to bump Vince Young with: Drew Olson, Maurice Drew, Matt Leinart and Jerome Harrison.  It's counter-intuitive, but a loaded Western field greatly aided Bush because he was such a clear-cut #1 Western candidate.  Again, Young lost a lot of vital Heisman points under this scenario.
  • Notre Dame-Notre Dame holds a special prestige when it comes to the Heisman.  The school owns seven such awards, and has helped USC achieve its last two (and soon-to-be three tonight) when Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart had memorable late-season performances against the Irish.  Additionally, USC and Notre Dame own 13 (14 after tonight) Heisman trophies.
  • USC/Notre Dame-The USC/Notre Dame game was the most televised college football game in oh, forever.  It also happened to be a great game where Reggie Bush became the lead Heisman candidate this year, rushing for 150 yards and three memorable touchdowns.  He also did that little "Bush Push" thing.
  • Surprise victory in the South-The last time a USC Heisman candidate went up against a Southwest candidate, he ended up carrying the South.  Matt Leinart had a solid points edge over Adrian Peterson in the South last year.  Southern voters have rewarded USC Heisman candidates of late.  I hunch this is because they still remember USC going down to Auburn and winning a much-hyped game early in the 2003 season.
  • Mid Atlantic memories-The Mid Atlantic region has never seen Vince Young up close.  It has, however, seen Reggie Bush.  In another much-hyped game, Reggie Bush scored all three of USC's touchdowns to sneak out a victory over Virginia Tech in the 2004 season opener.  Advantage: Bush.
  • Northeast memories-Reggie Bush was a finalist for the 2004 Heisman ceremony.  He got a lot of publicity in New York last year even though Matt Leinart would eventually win the award.  He's a telegenic kid, and only helped his 2005 cause by earning Heisman votes the season previous (ask Matt Leinart about this).  Heisman voters have long memories, and the ones in the Northeast know Vince Young wasn't in New York City last year.
  • The Midwest effect-USC and Texas both played games in the Midwest this year, Texas against Ohio State early in the season, and USC against Notre Dame a little later in the year.  Young led his team to a victory with an impressive final scoring drive and touchdown pass.  Reggie Bush carried the USC offense in South Bend, scoring three crucial touchdowns.  I remember seeing a poll on ESPN.com a few days before the USC/Fresno State game asking what player deserved to win the Heisman Trophy.  The results were mixed across the country, but in Ohio, a state that had seen Vince Young up close, the voters were leaning by a good margin towards Bush.  I knew right then that Bush had a very strong shot at claiming the Midwest and the Heisman.  The fact that his game in that region came later in the year, was seen by more television viewers, generated more buzz and appeared to have convinced even the people of Ohio, says something about his carry in that region.
  • The Bush Push-Very few college football players enter the public lexicon the Reggie Bush did when he assisted teammate Matt Leinart on a touchdown run against Notre Dame.  The play, and the term, became water-cooler material across America, pushing Reggie Bush further into legendary status and into the American consciousness.  The same simply cannot be said for anything about Vince Young at this point in his career.

When you factor all these things in, it's pretty clear that Reggie Bush was probably headed to a convincing Heisman victory, straw polls be damned.

But, then he went out and had two fantastic games against Fresno State and UCLA, one of them historic and so heavy on the buzz factor that ESPN did nothing but talk about Bush the Monday after that game, then rebroadcasted it on its "Classic" network.  FoxSports' cable units also did the same.

All this means there is little doubt about the Heisman outcome a few hours from now.  Reggie Bush should even win the Southwest region, according to this analysis by StiffArmTrophy.com.

All that's left to consider is how certain regional players perform and how big will Bush's win be.  Will Jerome Harrison and Drew Olson make the West's top five?  Will A.J. Hawk be 5th in the Midwest, or Michael Robinson?  Can DeAngelo Williams sneak into the South's top five?  We'll soon find out. 

Saturday
Dec102005

Heisman bitterness

Here's an article from the Dallas News' Chip Brown, talking about Vince Young's likely second-place finish to Reggie Bush.  It just reeks with bitterness.

This kind of story happens every year, just like BCS complaint pieces.

Brown's big angle is to play Vince Young's card, that he just made less plays than Reggie Bush, and that he had bad timing in not playing stronger late.  However, I think this is sour grapes.  As noted on here, and reflected at HeismanPundit.com, Reggie Bush was never out of the Heisman lead.

It's disigenuous to bring up "several straw polls had Vince Young leading two weeks ago".  Straw polls are exactly that, straw polls, and they're completely unreliable in most cases.  If Heisman voting was done week-by-week, Reggie Bush would have won every single week of this season after the Notre Dame game.  The Texas media likes to make it sound like Young was always in the driver's seat when in reality, he only made the thing close after his 500-yard game against Oklahoma State a few weeks back that coincided with a few quiet Bush games.

It's hypocritical to argue that Young was the victim of bad timing when in fact, if he'd won, he would have been the recipient of good timing in having his good game later than Reggie Bush.  But homer media are never honest and cast a funny revisionist spin every year on the outcome of the Heisman trophy.  I only ask that we all be honest about the award, take its flaws at face value but also embrace the prestige it carries.  There is no other award like it in all of sports.

That said, it is CFR's assessment that even if Reggie Bush had not finished so remarkably well against Fresno State and UCLA, and had Young not locked up a bit against Texas A&M, assuming both players had average games for themselves instead, that Reggie Bush would have won the award.  He was the favorite, and would have come out the favorite.

The problem with these polls is that they're not a good reflection of the core of Heisman voters, the "silent majority" if you will.  Over the history of the award, it's apparent that Heisman voters aren't as swayed by the weekly changes in the race as the rest of us fans and hyperinvolved media.  Thus, the Heismandments, which are quite instructive about projecting who will be the winner.  Reggie Bush was very likely in the favor of this base of conservative voters, and the soon-to-be runaway win against a great second-place candidate is indicative of this strong core support.  He'd been a Heisman finalist the year before (unlike Young), had already won two titles (unlike Young), played for a more prestigious Heisman program (USC's 6 to Texas' 2) and was on the #1 team.  Those things would have worked greatly in his favor over Young even without the Fresno performance.

In short, the bitter columns are heavily misinformed about the award's realities, too reflective of the media's hyper nature and not enough about the more glacial pace of the Heisman award.  Remember, it's their award, not CFR's or Chip Brown's.

Beyond that, saying things like "style over substance?" is an unnecessary dig at Reggie Bush.  I don't know about you, but Reggie Bush is just as much substance as style.  The guy is a competitive freak, he's carried USC through several games this year (just as Young has carried Texas), and is more than just the flashy plays.  That's something you'd only learn, however, if you watch him, and USC, a little more closely.  Imagine if people said Vince Young was just style?  They'd be ridiculed.  I've done my homework and watched both of these guys a lot this year and in years previous.  Clearly Chip Brown hasn't seen much of Bush or is just being very dishonest in his attempt to elevate his guy, Vince Young.

One last thing.  Brown tried to correlate Charles Woodson's win over Peyton Manning in 1997 with Reggie Bush beating Vince Young in 2005.  Once again Brown is being dishonest.  Woodson won because Manning failed to beat Florida, and did very little memorable other than live on his hype and put up the necessary numbers.  He had a fine season, but I remember watching him all year going, "when is this guy going to look like a Heisman winner?"  It never happened.  Meanwhile, Woodson was captaining the most dominant defense in a decade, making huge plays against his rival (imagine that?) and being the face on the #1 team.  His win was neither a surprise not a product of a late exciting moment against Ohio State.  Woodson ended up winning by a large margin, once again telling us that core Heisman voters had long been aware of him.

Let's all learn something from this year and remove the bitter beer faces if our guys don't win or finish where we want them.  The award is a great award, it has its own mysterious methods and ways, and in the end is fairly predictable.  Let's not go out of our way to falsely disparage other candidates, use dumb reasoning or otherwise be captain crankyhead about it.  Reggie Bush is an outstanding Heisman trophy winner and will long be remembered as a great Heisman winner.  He was an obvious, slam-dunk choice, and if he weren't there, Vince Young would have been an outstanding winner as well.  The media needs to get over itself, however, and stick to attacking the BCS, something it knows a little more about. 

Saturday
Dec102005

Are we forgetting somebody?

Earlier this week CNNSI put up a list of Heisman "booms and busts", players who did well and did not do well in the professional leagues after winning the Heisman trophy.

CFR Reader Howard writes in:

How come everyone forgets Leon Hart, a Heisman lineman, who starred at Notre Dame and at Detroit?
Great point Howard, and in short, I think its indicative of the age of the person making the list that a lot of older winners weren't mentioned.

Taking this on a bit of a tangent, I think a lot of people get their feathers all ruffled when a favorite player of theirs doesn't win the Heisman and attack the award. I think it's misguided. To me the Heisman is the greatest award in all of sports, steeped in heavy mythology and over its history, has told a great story about the game of college football. It's a treat to go back and learn things about Leon Hart, about Glenn Davis, about Roger Staubach and Nile Kinnick. Years from now we'll fondly remember Desmond Howard's charisma and the grit of a guy like Ron Dayne.

 

As for Hart, it speaks to his abilities and the prestige of Notre Dame in the late 40's that a lineman would win an already prestigious award.

Saturday
Dec102005

USC's Reggie Bush Heisman promotional video

Here's the link.

Not bad, although it's kind of a lazy pitch-job on their part.

There's also the Leinart video if that's more your taste.

Saturday
Dec102005

Another Bush highlight video

Lots of homemade videos with Reggie Bush high school and college highlights are circulating the internet right now.

This is impressive, but right now the website hosting it says it's exceeded its bandwidth.

I have it saved to my hard drive, but it's pretty large and I'd rather not charge through my bandwidth this month if possible.  I may post it at other times this month or early next year if reminded.  Stay tuned. 

Saturday
Dec102005

Bush's high school highlights

I don't know how long this link will survive on their website, and you need a login, but the New York Times put up an eight minute video of Reggie Bush high school highlights nearly two weeks ago.

Here is the link.

They're stunning.  I had actually seen some of Bush's videos when he was still in high school, and pretty much knew he'd be special.  What had sealed it for me was watching the high school football equivalent of an all star game, the US Army All America game.  Bush's Western squad was getting destroyed by a better-coached Eastern squad.  It was a horrible effort on the West's part, but their only productive player was Bush.  He didn't have any jaw-dropping highlights, but I saw a spark, what was really the first sign of the amazing internal fire that drives him.  He was upset and did his level best to make something out of himself that game and help his sorry teammates.  It didn't work, but I saw a guy who was not only a great athlete, but someone with a competitive fire well beyond that of his peers.  It was Jordanesque.

Only now is everyone else realizing his greatness.  I know we all love his highlights, but that game showed me something else, something we'd later see in Bush's iron willed bail-outs of USC in games against Virginia Tech, Stanford, Oregon State and UCLA in 2004 and Arizona State, Notre Dame and Fresno State this year.

Right now the press and the public are just coming around to realizing the heights of his physical greatness.  I see something greater, beyond the highlights, and it's something many of us won't realize until much later in his NFL career, that the guy is an all-time great athlete.  He has transformed himself as a back, showing a physical toughness people didn't expect after he was initially dogged as a flashy back with no inside carry abilities.  He attacked that image by getting stronger and changing his physical approach to the game in the offseason.  We're seeing the results this year.  The transformation is just another sign of the great internal fire the guy has.  Football is too complex a sport to have a player as dominant as Michael Jordan (11 players to a side versus five, for starters), but Bush may be as close as we'll get.  Just watch.

Saturday
Dec102005

It's too funny, I have to show it

I'm not one for making digs at Vince Young.  He's had a ridiculous season, putting Texas in a legit position to win a championship and will finish a very honorable second in the Heisman race.  CFR likes the guy.

That said, he does have a horrible throwing motion.

Scan down a little on this link to see a clip from the movie Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico throws an object at Napoleon.  I swear I've seen Young make a few throws just as awkwardly from his side as in this clip.  Ugh.