Weekend Watch List: Open season on Heisman balloting

Heisman season just opened. Make that re-opened.

McFadden has thrown and run his way into Heisman contention. (AP)

Darren McFadden made sure of that Friday afternoon. Two-hundred six yards rushing, four touchdowns (three rushing) against LSU. A three-man race between Tim Tebow, Chase Daniel and Todd Reesing just got expanded. The problem is that while McFadden's chances aren't done, his team's regular season is.

D-Mac won't be able to make another statement before the Dec. 5 voting deadline. But 1,725 yards and being last season's Heisman runner-up sure helps. So does being the SEC's No. 3 all-time rusher.

This year's Heisman is just as jumbled as the polls.

That would suggest the quarterback of the winning team Saturday in Kansas City has some sort of advantage. Missouri's Chase Daniel already is high on a lot of straw polls. Kansas' Todd Reesing is gaining ground.

It might be about the unwritten rules that kick in this week:

• The winner usually plays for a top 10 team (1990 winner Ty Detmer was the last player not to do so).

• The trophy is won in a big, nationally televised game (see Troy Smith vs. Michigan; Matt Leinart vs. Notre Dame, etc.).

• In November (see, ditto).

• It was won by a skill player (every year).

That would suggest the quarterback of the winning team Saturday in Kansas City will be the Heisman frontrunner less than two weeks from the voting deadline. Missouri's Chase Daniel already is high on a lot of straw polls. Kansas' Todd Reesing is gaining ground.

But should a team's record be a factor? The unwritten rules say yes. Tim Tebow has spent a season telling us no. Like Colt Brennan last season, Tebow has obliterated the record book. Like Brennan last season, Tebow's team has lost three games (heading into the regular-season finale against Florida State).

WWL has this vision of the average Heisman voter: Male, about 67 years old and sitting in his leather barco this weekend with a snifter of brandy. That, and he doesn't know the Chase at Missouri from the chase scene in The French Connection.

Ah, but because the SEC has its own network and Tebow has a camera-ready smile, Heisman Voter will do the easy thing.

It's all about tradition. Missouri and Kansas don't have as much as Miami, Notre Dame, Southern California, Oklahoma, Ohio State, Michigan, Florida, Florida State and Texas.

Those schools have won 15 of the past 20 Heismans.

Missouri has had just two players finish in the top 10, the last 47 years ago. Kansas has had three in its history.

So it's unlikely that either Armageddon at Arrowhead QB will win, right? Well, stick this in with your giblets. Tebow is just as unlikely. No sophomore has ever won the Heisman either.

It seems that somehow, some way those unwritten rules are going to be broken.

Scouting the Nation

• OK, so we don't have an ocean, mountains, a Miracle Mile or Times Square, but this is a significant event in the history of Kansas City.

The city that gave us barbeque and bad baseball is a metro area split down the middle -- literally. A state line separating Kansas from Missouri cuts right through the city, its suburban sprawl and its heart. A mixed marriage is defined here as a Jayhawk marrying a Tiger. No stats are available on the divorce rates, but the bonds will be tested on Saturday.

Kansas will have to find a way to contain Missouri's Jeremy Maclin. (US Presswire)

Kansas-Missouri is the biggest sports event here since the 1985 World Series and one of the biggest in the city's history. Two top five locals don't show up in our backyard every day.

WWL wasn't around when the Royals or Athletics played their first games (Chiefs weren't even a factor in 1963) but here is one local's list (WWL's) of the five biggest sporting events in the city's history.

1. Super Bowl IV (won by the Chiefs)
2. 1985 World Series (I-70 Series won by the Royals over the Cardinals)
3. 1980 World Series (won by the Phillies)
4. Kansas-Missouri, 2007
5. 1988 Final Four, (Kansas beat Oklahoma for the national championship)

• Final weather report: Forty percent chance of light snow Friday night. Game time temperature, clear and 42 degrees. Advantage, Kansas. The cold should affect Missouri's speedy, high-scoring offense the most.

• Kansas is going to have to find some way to stop Missouri's Jeremy Maclin. The numbers prove he is possibly the most dangerous all-purpose runner since Reggie Bush. In the past five years Maclin has the third-best all-purpose average in the country. Reggie Bush is No. 1 (222.31, 2005); East Carolina's Chris Johnson is No. 2 (currently 210.18); Maclin is at 209.91.

Missouri's redshirt freshman already has the NCAA freshman all-purpose record and is coming off a 345-yard game against Kansas State.

• Dear winner: Don't try bringing down the goalposts. They need them at Arrowhead for Sunday's Raider-Chiefs game. Extra security has been hired, by the way, to keep Tigers and Jayhawks from gouging each other's eyes out.

• Just so you know, neither Kansas nor Missouri is going away any time soon. Kansas returns 36 of the 44 in its two-deep lineup in 2008. Missouri has 17 starters back. Both teams return their Heisman-worthy quarterbacks.

• WWL still can't believe USC lost to Stanford, especially after it whipped Arizona State on Thursday. Six sacks, five touchdowns (four passing) by John David Booty? These were the Trojans of old. If not for the Stanford hiccup they'd be in the national championship picture. Instead, they need help to go to the Rose Bowl. Oregon has to lose one of its two final games to UCLA or Oregon State. USC has to beat UCLA on Dec. 1.

• WWL didn't have a problem with Nick Saban's 9/11 and Pearl Harbor comments. This is Auburn week. To those people, losing to Louisiana-Monroe is a catastrophe. Losing against Auburn? Saban might find out real quick what a hot seat feels like.

The last two games will determine Karl Dorrell's future at UCLA. (Getty Images)

• Call it Pink Slip Weekend. Dennis Franchione resigned after beating Texas. Two more coaches could be asked to, uh, leave their offices soon after this weekend's games. Expect news out of Lincoln where Bill Callahan was able to hold Colorado to 65 points in what likely will be his last game.

Not as certain to get The Big Haircut is UCLA's Karl Dorrell. That's because he has one more game left against USC after Saturday's home game against Oregon. But let's put it this way; Dorrell had better beat the Brady Leaf-led Ducks. Heck, Arizona did.

• If Tommy Tuberville doesn't take the A&M job, you can probably scratch Rich Rodriguez, too. The West Virginia coach isn't going to leave if he's chasing a national championship in December.

• The winner of UConn-West Virginia wins the Big East. Did any of us ever foresee a BCS that could include Connecticut and Hawaii in major bowls?

• Oklahoma's Sam Bradford has been cleared to play against Oklahoma State after suffering a concussion last week against Texas Tech. That could mean Bradford will have a great game or it could mean he's out the first time a defensive lineman's head goes upside his head. These concussions are tricky things.

• What's worse than having your name attached to the SMU opening after only one season? Having to call a press conference to deny that you're interested in the SMU opening after only one season. That was Steve Kragthorpe, who felt he had to respond after a Louisville season gone south (5-6). Insiders say that the venom directed at Kragthorpe in Louisville is so brutal that he was considering leaving for a program that last went to a bowl in the 1980s.

• Tennessee can't win the SEC East, can it? The Vols have to win at Kentucky to clinch the division. Georgia has been spiking the Vols' grits this week, hoping the Wildcats prevail (they should). The Bulldogs win the East if Tennessee loses no matter what happens in the finale against Georgia Tech.

The point of all this is that No. 1 LSU has a better chance of beating Tennessee than Georgia in the SEC title game.

• Funny how these things work out. By Saturday night we'll be down to, at most, three one-loss teams -- Kansas or Missouri, West Virginia and Ohio State. If West Virginia loses we could be looking at the prospect of having a two-loss team (Georgia?) in the BCS title game for the first time.