What a week in College Football! After the bowl games were announced, the 2009 College Football Awards ceremony took place. Tonight, the Heisman Trophy will be presented. More specifically, the prestigious Notre Dame football program has found a new coach, but I'll get to that a little later. There's a lot to talk about this weekend in College Football.
Tonight's Heisman Trophy winner is going to be very deserving, whoever it is. Mark Ingram has led Alabama to the National Championship and a perfect regular season while racking up over 1,500 rushing yards and 15 TDs. Ndamukong Suh sacked Colt McCoy 4.5 times in the Big 12 Championship game and finished the year with 12 sacks. Tim Tebow led Florida to their third BCS Bowl game in the last four years and had 31 total touchdowns. Colt McCoy also led his team to the National Championship and tallied 30 total touchdowns while completing 70.5% of his passes. But the guy who I think should win the trophy is Stanford's running back, Toby Gerhart.
I know Stanford is not competing for a national championship, but without Gerhart, they wouldn't even be in a bowl game or have a winning record. The only two games he didn't rush for 100 yards, Stanford lost. Gerhart led the nation in rushing touchdowns with 26 and yards with 1,736. The Heisman Trophy is supposed to go to the player who played the best over the course of the season. Four of the last six years, the Heisman Trophy winner has lost in the National Championship, and one years they didn't, Tim Tebow still lost the bowl game. My point is that the Heisman Trophy keeps going to someone who played or is going to play in the National Championship game, but I don't think it has to. Nothing against the other finalists, but Gerhart put up insane numbers this year, and he is the reason why his team won eight games.
The other major headline is the coaching change in South Bend. I could have sworn that last week, former Cincinnati football head coach Brian Kelly said that he would stay in Cincinnati as the Bearcats' coach. Yesterday, he was introduced as the Notre Dame head coach. Kelly lied to his team and the country when he said he was staying in Cincinnati, and I find that lying has become more and more prevalent in sports in recent years. I was watching ESPN yesterday and they showed interviews with some of the Cincinnati players, including standout wide receiver Mardy Gilyard, and the players were furious. One of them said that Cincinnati was 12-0 not because of Kelly but because of the players on the team. It's just sad to see coaches let down their players like that.
This seems oddly familiar though. Two years ago, a very famous football program (Michigan) was looking for a new coach. The guy they hired (Rich Rodriguez) left his former team (West Virginia) after leading them to a BCS bowl game and then skipped the bowl game. Yes, this was when West Virginia beat Oklahoma 48-28 in the 2008 Fiesta Bowl. Brian Kelly and his former Cincinnati football team are in an eerily similar situation. In Rodriguez's first year at Michigan, his team went 3-9. With Notre Dame's starting quarterback Jimmy Clausen and their top wide receiver Golden Tate leaving for the NFL Draft, is Kelly going to follow the trend? Notre Dame won 6 games this year, and without those two prolific players, they may not have won any. The Fighting Irish scored 20 or more points in every game this year, but their defense allowed 20 or more points in 9 of their 12 games. I'm not so sure that Kelly can get this team where they want to be. If so, it's going to take a few years first. His situation is a combination of Charlie Weis's and Rich Rodriguez.
No comments:
Post a Comment