When picking Heisman winner, you gotta have Gerhart
It has been a down year for the Heisman.
The race, not the award. The trophy represents everything good and right about college football. This year's race, though, needs a jacket. It's been hard to warm up to. There has been a dearth of those Stiff Arm moments we've been conditioned to expect from our Heisman favorites. When the video of a Fresno State offensive lineman scoring the winning two-point conversion goes viral, we're getting desperate.
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| Gerhart added an 18-yard touchdown pass in Stanford's 45-38 win over Notre Dame. (US Presswire) |
Both he and Colt McCoy are competing against their own accomplishments as much as other players. The same goes for Alabama's Mark Ingram. As good as the sophomore tailback is, he is the shining example of why the program has never won a Heisman. In the two biggest games of the season the last two weeks, he hasn't been the best player on his own team. Auburn held Ingram to a career-low 30 yards and teammate Greg McElroy was the MVP of the SEC title game.
It's no insult to remind the masses the biggest reason Alabama is No. 1. It is the best team.
Those guys have been good. The Heisman demands great. To get there, the winner has to be consistent. That's the word that kept coming to mind when I filled out my ballot this week. My "it" guy and CBSSports.com national offensive player of the year is Stanford's Toby Gerhart.
The throwback tailback led the nation in rushing yards (1,736) and touchdowns (26). In a year when skill players had a hard time standing out, Gerhart took a lot of the skill out of the argument. Most of the time, he got down and mercilessly pounded his opponents.
"He's obviously a rude dude when he gets the ball in his hands," said the man who recruited him. "I don't think people in the Pac-10 wanted to tackle him sometimes."
Most recently, Walt Harris was the quarterbacks coach at Akron. Four years ago, he was Stanford's head coach, landing the tough-running kid from Norco, Calif., who ran like his father. Todd Gerhart was a tough-running back for the Denver Gold of the United States Football League. Todd coached his son in high school, obviously passing along more than his DNA.
When Harris got him, though, Toby's career started slowly because of numerous stingers.
"I was worried about his long-term career," Harris said. "He ran hard then."
Things got better. Gerhart became a two-sport athlete, also playing baseball for Stanford's nationally known program as an outfielder known for his speed and defense. His future, though, seems to be in football, where the NFL can always use a 6-foot-1, 235-pounder pounder with speed.
For those who would dismiss him for playing at egg-headed Stanford, you're as dumb as its student-athletes are smart. Yes, Gerhart has a 3.25 GPA as a management, science and engineering major. But he also dominated a Pac-10, a league that had more ranked teams (five) than any conference.
The Pac-10 was clearly a strong No. 2 behind the SEC in terms of overall strength. It is one of only a handful of leagues that plays a complete round-robin schedule. There are few body-bag games because Pac-10 teams don't typically play I-AAs.
That makes the senior's accomplishments all that more impressive. He averaged more than 200 yards per game against ranked opponents, almost 150 per game against Pac-10 teams. There was little or no padding of stats against inferior opponents because there were few inferior opponents.
Compare him to the only other running back finalist: In one less game than Ingram, Gerhart ran for 194 more yards and scored eight more touchdowns.
This is what we want in a Heisman winner: Talent and poise to go along with the numbers. Unlike one former winner who is rotting in jail, Gerhart isn't going to embarrass the award. As a kid, he was taking college classes at a local community college while in elementary school. Gerhart is taking 21 units this quarter and is expected to graduate a quarter early.
"The Heisman Trophy is one of those awards that kind of evolved into 50 percent preseason hype, 25 percent giving it to someone who is on an undefeated team and 25 percent is someone who actually deserves it," Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh said. "To me, Toby represents what the Heisman Trophy represents. He's the kind of guy who literally takes our football team on his back."
Toby G gets better as the game goes on and got better as the season wore on. In the final six games, his yards per carry increased each game from 4.4 per carry against Arizona on Oct. 17 to 7.1 against Notre Dame on Nov. 28. In those six games, he ran for at least 120 yards each time.
Heisman moment? Perhaps you saw him shred the Irish in prime time. My G-Man rushed for 205 yards and put up four touchdowns (one of those passing). To all the myopians who compare every team and every player to how they would do in a certain Southern conference, yes, Gerhart could play in the SEC. He'd thrive, actually. Ask any of the 12 coaches if they would like to have him.
He's a throwback to when running backs had more guts than wiggle. If there's something this spread-option world needs is a throwback every now and then. If Woody and Bo were around, they'd be wondering how he slipped through their fingers.
Then they'd be like most of the defenders who tried to tackle Gerhart this season.
Flat on their backs.
My Heisman ballot
1. Toby Gerhart, running back, Stanford: Eleven games of at least 100 rushing yards this season.
2. Ndamukong Suh, defensive tackle, Nebraska: The best college player I ever saw was Barry Sanders. Suh is the Barry Sanders of defensive tackles. If you saw the performance against Texas, you will agree. So will Colt McCoy after being rag-dolled by the superhuman Suh on one play.
Suh won the Nagurski Award as the nation's best defender on Monday. The Outland Award (best interior lineman) is all but his. I'm not convinced that the first defensive player to be invited as a finalist since 1997 won't win the Heisman.
3. Mark Ingram, running back, Alabama: Broke the school rushing record with 1,542 yards. When 'Bama absolutely needed him, he responded with 189 total yards against Florida on Saturday.
The biggest news was that Nick Saban singled out Ingram for praise. That happens with any player for Saban about as often as the coach smiles. When asked if Ingram deserves to win the Heisman, the Sabanator said, "Absolutely."
