Begin the Drumbeat For the Offbeat Heisman

Last year’s Heisman winner Sam Bradford is hurt, but it’s the rest of the Heisman field taking potshots at their own feet that is opening up the race. Tim Tebow just threw two touchdowns to the wrong team. Colt McCoy has a pick in every game this year. Mark Ingram, a recently trendy candidate, somehow had 99 yards quietly, and fumbled for the first time in his career at the prime moment for disaster. Tony Pike was the small-school stud of choice until he got injured.Does anyone want to win the Heisman?

It would be easy to spin that as a good thing -- look, selfless players! -- but the real story is that there are simply no excellent name-brand candidates for the Heisman Trophy this year. This listof knockoff candidates could well be one of the better resources going forward: Kellen Moore is still lethally efficient; Eric Berry is phenomenal as ever.

The most important factors in most recent Heisman campaigns, though, were staggering stat totals, sometimes over a career, and BCS title contention; this is why Jason White won a Heisman. But getting past the idea that the field general of a near-unbeaten school deserves an individual trophy for being the quarterback of a winning team is the sort of thing that might make the Heisman more compelling. Giving it to Nebraska’s terrific, numbers-light DT Ndamukong Suh or the marvelous, numbers-heavy Freddie Barnes or the mountain would be a welcome departure from the logic that rewards the same seven-to-ten schools’ backfields every year.

And this year, with the glamour candidates struggling, it would make sense. Think about it, Heisman voters. You have a chance to make Texas fans as mad as you once did Tennessee fans. Coincidentally, it may also be the right choice.

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