Week 15: Heisman Trophy Watch

Written December 2, 2008 by Jack Jones

Colt McCoy’s season is over as far as the Heisman Trophy is concerned. With Texas being held out of the Big 12 Championship game by Oklahoma, the Longhorns’ QB won’t get any more chances to make his case for the biggest award in college sports. If the season ended today, McCoy would likely walk away as the 2008 Heisman winner. He’s completed nearly 78 percent of his passes this season (291 of 375) and has thrown for 32 touchdowns to just 7 interceptions. Something that’s often overlooked is McCoy’s ability to scramble. He’s racked up 576 yards this season and 10 touchdowns, all on the ground. He doesn’t quite have the touchdowns of Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, or the yards of Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell, but he does have a head to head win over Bradford’s Sooners and he is without a doubt the most valuable player of any team in the top 10 of the BCS right now. No other team relies so much on the performance of one player, which is why, if the voting were held today, Colt McCoy would be my Heisman Trophy winner.

Sam Bradford falls just behind Colt McCoy in our Heisman Watch this week. Bradford is coming off of a 30-44 passing, 370 yard, 4 touchdown performance against Oklahoma State. The Oklahoma quarterback is first in the nation in touchdowns (46), third in passing yards (4,080), second in QB Rating (191.0 (first in the BCS conferences)) and has thrown just 6 interceptions to match his 46 TDs. If those aren’t Heisman-worthy numbers, I don’t know what possibly could be. Like a lot of people, I’m reserving my judgement on Bradford until after the Big 12 Championship game. He’s certainly deserving at this point in the year, but he can’t have any kind of misstep against Missouri this week if he’s hoping to walk away with the trophy. If Bradford turns in another stellar performance and adds the Big 12 title (and BCS Championship game birth) to his resume, it’s going to be hard to justify giving the Heisman to anyone but him. Bradford’s Sooners are 17 point favorites in the Big 12 Championship this week.

This week’s SEC Championship game for Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators is obviously huge. The Gators need a win to secure a spot in the BCS title game. It’s still unlikely that Tebow can jump both Sam Bradford and Colt McCoy to win his second consecutive Heisman Trophy, but if Tebow leads the Gators to the national title game and performs well, you can’t tell me Tebow won’t be on the minds of the voters. He doesn’t quite have the eye-popping numbers of Bradford and McCoy, but he certainly has the “it” factor going for him. Expect him to get the invite to New York, but don’t expect him to get the nod again this year.

As Texas Tech has fallen, so has Graham Harrell’s Heisman stock. Harrell has still performed well. He’s second in the nation in passing yards with 4,747 and his 41 touchdowns are just behind Bradford in terms of BCS conference quarterbacks. The problem Harrell ran into is that his team lost late, and to Oklahoma’s Bradford. He did lead his team to a win over Texas this season, but that seem a long way away now. He played well last week despite breaking two fingers on his non-throwing hand, but Texas Tech’s 35-28 victory over Baylor just looked ugly. Harrell should be invited, but he doesn’t have any regular season games left to make his case any better.

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