quote:
It's gone to players not on an elite team and who didn't play an elite team in their bowl games plenty.

Lamar Jackson 2016 - team was 9-4 and played 8-4 LSU in the Citrus Bowl

Johnny Manziel 2012 - team was 11-2 and played 10-3 Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl

RGIII 2011 - team was 11-3 and played 7-6 Washington in the Alamo Bowl

Ron Dayne 1999 - team was 11-2 and played 8-4 Stanford in the Rose Bowl

Ricky Williams 1998 - team was 9-3 and played 8-5 Miss State in the Cotton Bowl

You listed a bunch of top 25 teams. That's why I said what I said about players on bad teams not getting as much love, because bad teams don't generally support the individual who wants to compete for those awards. A bad OL and unbalanced offense won't usually allow an elite RB to shine. A bad group of receivers won't generally allow an elite pocket passing QB to shine. The exception would be if you have a great offense (since it's usually offensive players who win the Heisman) but your defense is extra bad, and you have to outscore teams in a shootout each week. That certainly would put an emphasis on the QB, RB, WR, etc. if they are excelling in spite of the rest of the team not helping out. But again, you would still need a good offense for a player to stand out like that.

quote:
If you include the CFP, that gives some players as many as 2 more games (conference championship games plus 2 CFP games) than others.

The whole body of work needs to be looked at. It's the same sort of thing when judging who should be in the playoffs. Some teams get an extra game due to conference championships. What waiting until after bowl season does is allows for a greater body of work against (potentially) better competition to factor into the award. More information is generally better than less.

quote:
Every sports league I'm aware of only includes the regular season games for season awards. Why should college football be different?

College football has 12 regular season games and one conference championship for those that hold one. The NFL has 17 regular season games. MLB has 162 games. College baseball has 56 games. College basketball has 25-30 games. The NBA plays about 82 games. So in the major sports (college and pro), there are many more games than are played in college football, as a comparison. With relatively so few games played in college football compared to other sports, I think it would be good to allow for a bigger body of work. It accounts for outliers better, too.

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by lsufball19

Franklin, TN

Member since Sep 2008

64635 posts

Posted on 1/11/23 at 4:09 pm to FooManChoo

quote:
College football has 12 regular season games and one conference championship for those that hold one. The NFL has 17 regular season games. MLB has 162 games. College baseball has 56 games. College basketball has 25-30 games. The NBA plays about 82 games. So in the major sports (college and pro), there are many more games than are played in college football, as a comparison. With relatively so few games played in college football compared to other sports, I think it would be good to allow for a bigger body of work. It accounts for outliers better, too.

This is not as persuasive as you think it is.

The NFL also has 4 playoff rounds, as do the other major sports. That's a lot of additional games as a percentage of total games of their season

College baseball plays as many as 20 additional postseason games. College basketball, 6. Proportionally to the lengths of their regular seasons, college football isn't any different. One baseball or basketball game is not the same as one football game, so using aggregate number of games played as an argument is illogical for the point you're trying to make.

Answer this for me. Would you be arguing this if you didn't think Bennett would have won the Heisman had the CFP games counted? The Heisman trophy criteria don't need to change because once in a blue moon the results might have been different had bowl games been included. It's a disservice to players on teams who aren't in the CFP or in dud bowl games. It's not a team award. It's an individual award. Getting ALL the media attention for two weeks playing on one of the top 4 teams is prejudicial to every candidate not on one of those 4 teams, and recency bias would be absurd, especially with players opting out like they do now.

You have a good postseason run, you can win CFP MVP, or NBA Finals MVP, Super Bowl MVP or World Series MVP, etc. You have the best regular season, you can win the Heisman, MVP, Player of the Year, etc. This shouldn't be controversial. It's that way in every sport, always has been, and always will be.

This post was edited on 1/11/23 at 4:10 pm

1 ...

Report Post

Posted by wadewilson

Member since Sep 2009

36552 posts

Posted on 1/11/23 at 4:20 pm to DawgsLife

quote:

So Burrow was not all that after all? Wasn't he surrounded by great talent? Apparently he wasn't very good.

If I was thinking of any specific players in my argument, it would have been Tim Tebow, but nice try.

This post was edited on 1/11/23 at 4:23 pm

0 ...

Report Post

Posted by FooManChoo

Member since Dec 2012

41676 posts

Posted on 1/11/23 at 4:35 pm to lsufball19

quote:
This is not as persuasive as you think it is.

OK. It's not persuasive to you. You asked why college football should be different and I gave a reason: fewer games and a smaller body of work to judge by. It's even smaller when you consider that most teams schedule a few cupcakes each season, and some conferences are generally inferior to others in terms of talent, speed, athleticism, etc.

Having a bigger body of work is helpful.

quote:
The NFL also has 4 playoff rounds, as do the other major sports. That's a lot of additional games as a percentage of total games of their season

Sure, and the college football playoffs will be expanding soon. It's not many games, but it will be several more compared to the pre-CFP era.

quote:
College baseball plays as many as 20 additional postseason games. College basketball, 6. Proportionally to the lengths of their regular seasons, college football isn't any different. One baseball or basketball game is not the same as one football game, so using aggregate number of games played as an argument is illogical for the point you're trying to make.

I'm not trying to argue percentages here. I'm just saying that there is a small body of work in college football compared to all other major sports, including the NFL, which plays 42% more regular season games than college does. That's many more opportunities to show who the best player is, and the NFL doesn't have scrub teams that they can schedule to pad stats against.

quote:
Answer this for me. Would you be arguing this if you didn't think Bennett would have won the Heisman had the CFP games counted?

My first response started with "Bennett aside", meaning I wasn't arguing the point because of Bennett. I think he was a legit Heisman contender this year, but don't think he had the gaudy numbers to match up against some of the other guys, though the playoffs helped him on that front. This isn't an argument for Bennett, but a recognition that the college football season is very short and doesn't necessarily account for all the things that I think should be accounted for in knowing who the best is.

quote:
The Heisman trophy criteria don't need to change because once in a blue moon the results might have been different had bowl games been included. It's a disservice to players on teams who aren't in the CFP or in dud bowl games. It's not a team award. It's an individual award. Getting ALL the media attention for two weeks playing on one of the top 4 teams is prejudicial to every candidate not on one of those 4 teams, and recency bias would be absurd, especially with players opting out like they do now.

You have a good postseason run, you can win CFP MVP, or NBA Finals MVP, Super Bowl MVP or World Series MVP, etc. You have the best regular season, you can win the Heisman, MVP, Player of the Year, etc. This shouldn't be controversial. It's that way in every sport, always has been, and always will be.

While I agree with most of what you said, there is something to be said about such a small overall sample size in determining who the MVP is. In 12 games, if a player has one bad game, or even one mediocre game, it could mean the difference between a 1st place finish or being the runner up, even if his stats and overall performance had little to do with his individual impact. When it seems a tie-breaker is needed, a lot of times a heavy emphasis is put on the big games and how a player performed in them, but for some players, they may not have very many big games if any at all to use in their favor.

Page 1 2 3