VOD Not Available
This video is not available.
Why Christian McCaffrey Couldn’t Win The Heisman: College Football Cavalcade of Whimsy, Dec. 15
Why Christian McCaffrey couldn't win the Heisman. Pete Fiutak comments on the college football world.
December 15, 2015
Why Christian McCaffrey couldn’t win the Heisman, bowl season whining, and the coaching timing issue.
Follow and/or Contact or Baskets of Mini Muffins to @PeteFiutak
Sorry if this column sucks. It’s not my fault …
I woke up today excited about being a part of Rutgers football. I fell back asleep, and the feeling passed.
And, sometimes, what’s Florida’s trash becomes South Carolina’s treasure
Coaches are like goldfish. Lose one, flush him, go get another.
There’s just no good time for a coach to leave during the bowl season.
This is supposed to be when it’s all fun, and this is supposed to be the reward for a long year and all the hard work put in. But business is business, and if a coach gets hired to take on another gig, that’s it. Unless the team is in the playoff, then go be an employee somewhere else and get your new life started.
It doesn’t matter if it’s Justin Fuente diving in head-first to the Virginia Tech job, or Chris Ash being fired up about getting his chance at the Rutgers gig, or Arkansas offensive line coach Sam Pittman getting lured away by Georgia and making everyone grouchy, it’s all part of the deal. February is coming up fast and it’s now when things go into hyperdrive in the recruiting world – every day focusing on the job at hand counts. If you’re going to a new job, go do it – it’s okay. It’s business.
Mack Brown put it best to me – pretentious interview drop alert – after losing defensive coordinator Will Muschamp to Florida.
“We’re Texas. We’ll get another good coach.”
To put it another way, the Ball Coach got paid $2 million per win this year
I’m all for coaches being able to get whatever they can grab – if someone’s willing to give you gobs of money, go for it. However, it drives me up a wall when a coach keeps getting paid by a school even when he’s not the coach anymore. If he’s contractually owed the money, fine, but make him do something to earn it.
Steve Spurrier quit on his team and the South Carolina season, and he still got paid almost a million bucks to finish off his 2015 salary.
Make the guy teach golf. Make him by a TA for the Womyns Studies department. Make the guy a hot dog vendor – he has the visor for it.
”If you dream it, you can become anything. Like a doctor. Or a dancer.” – Justin Bieber
Not everyone can play shooting guard next to Steph Curry. Not every horse can win SI’s Sportsperson of the Year. Not every piece of chicken in the bucket is a giant breast. Not everyone gets to date Kourtney Kardashian. Actually … waiting for my turn at bat on that.
Not everyone gets to win the Heisman.
Didn’t we just do this?
In 2009, Toby Gerhart ran for 1,871 yards and 28 touchdowns in a stellar season for Stanford. He rumbled over Notre Dame for 205 yards and three scores, and he carried the Cardinal past USC with three touchdown runs in his two big games. While he wasn’t flashy, he came up with a strong enough year to finish a close second to Alabama’s Mark Ingram for the Heisman in a very close, very interesting vote. I voted for Nebraska DT Ndamukong Suh – the correct selection, by the way, based on his team-leading 85 tackles, 12 sacks, 20.5 tackles for loss, three blocked kicks, ten broken up passes, and one all-timer of a performance against unbeaten Texas in the Big 12 championship, but I digress – but Ingram was a worthy winner based on what he meant to the team and the season.
The 2009 Stanford team might have had Andrew Luck under center, but it was just okay. Ingram ran for 1,658 yards and 17 touchdowns and, unlike Gerhart, came up with a strong year as receiver with 32 grabs for 334 yards and three scores. But more than that, with everyone watching, he helped lead Alabama on the way to the national title with a 246-yard day against South Carolina and 113 yards and three touchdowns against No. 3 Florida in the SEC title game.
At the time, the argument was that Gerhart lost because he played for Stanford and not enough people paid attention to him. The reality was that he was very, very good for a good team, while the Heisman is about the very, very great for the great team. It’s as much of an MVP award as it is an MOP for the regular season.
There was almost no case to be made for Christian McCaffrey to win the 2015 Heisman.
With 90 carries for 460 yards and two touchdowns to win the SEC West, and then the SEC, being brutish was spectacular.
With the world focused on the LSU game and Leonard Fournette, Henry ran for 210 yards and three scores, turning the entire Tiger program and athletic department into a quivering bowl of pudding.
McCaffrey played in two huge games before the Pac-12 championship, looking very good in the loss to Oregon and was held to 94 rushing yards against Notre Dame, but it’s hard to argue for 244 all-purpose yards in the key loss to the Ducks when Henry ran for 271 against Auburn.
And the other problem this year? McCaffrey played in the wrong time zone. I’m sorry, but that’s the Stanford-Tree-falls-in-forest deal.
It sucks that Stanford played a ton of its games when half the country was sleeping. It sucks that not enough people paid attention to how amazing McCaffrey was each and every week. It sucks that about four people watched McCaffrey’s showstopping performance against USC in a Pac-12 championship game inexplicably played at the exact same time as the gripping Big Ten and ACC championships. But that’s sort of the point – Stanford’s games just didn’t matter as much as Alabama’s, and McCaffrey’s season didn’t mean as much as Henry’s.
The right guy won the 2015 Heisman trophy. I had McCaffrey second on my ballot and Watson third.
Someday, though, I really will make my protest vote of Reggie Bush.
”Now don’t go sayin’ the Sports Jock should be fitted for a skirt and some of them pretty hoop earrings, but I got a tear in my eye last night watching Ricky Suggs break the record.”
Every year I scream and complain about whiny Sports Jock & Chad radio hosts, grumpy sportswriters – is there another kind? – and Aqua Velva TV heads who lazily grouse about the all the bowls and all the matchups between teams they’ve never heard of. The complaining is worse than usual because the bowl season is providing the ammo.
Seriously, the 2015 AutoZone Cure Bowl would be appointment television for you if San Jose State was 6-6 instead of 5-7?
You don’t HAVE to eat the rumaki at the holiday party – especially if the bacon is soggy. You don’t HAVE to have that ninth cup of nog. You don’t HAVE to watch 2015 Heart of Dallas Bowl. But quit with the PTI-like pretend outrage just because people are out there playing college football games.
Let’s be honest – you have absolutely nothing better to do with your life than watch the Raycom Media Camellia Bowl. You’re not going to use those three hours working at a homeless shelter. You’re not going to discover a cure for light mayo. What are you going to do, play with your children and enjoy their precious youth? They’d rather play on their devices.
This bowl season is going to work out perfectly for you all the way around with lots of bowl games and lots of college football. The playoff games on New Year’s Eve, so you don’t have to talk to your date until ball drops.
Just watch. Or don’t. ESPN doesn’t care.
“Get used to this drill. You’ll be doing it a lot. Why? Because the legs feed the wolf, gentlemen. I can’t promise you we’ll be the best team at Lake Placid next February. But we will be the best conditioned. That I can promise you.”
Oh sure, figuring out the four teams in the playoff was all cut and dry, but it was really, really close to being far more interesting. Consider what might have been.
– It took one of the most miraculous plays of all-time for Arkansas to beat Ole Miss. The Rebels had the Hogs stopped, Hunter Henry blindly threw the ball backwards, Alex Collins weaved his way to a first down, and Arkansas won a 51-50 thriller. If Arkansas doesn’t make that one play, Ole Miss wins, goes on to win the SEC West, and probably beats Florida in a rematch for the SEC championship. Then the committee would’ve had to make a call – 11-2 SEC champ Ole Miss with a win over Alabama and a loss to Memphis, or 11-1 Alabama that couldn’t win its own division, or 11-2 Pac-12 champion Stanford.
– What if the officials made the correct call on Notre Dame QB DeShone Kizer being down just before the goal line late in the Stanford game? Time ticks down, the Irish almost certainly score a touchdown with almost no time left on the clock, wins, and then the argument becomes 11-1 Notre Dame with its one loss on the road at No. 1 Clemson, and with a win over Texas vs. 11-1 Big 12 champion Oklahoma with a loss to Texas.
– What if Michigan State didn’t get that crazy blocked punt for a touchdown against Michigan? The Wolverines win, and assuming everything else played out as it did, Ohio State would’ve gone on to face Iowa for the Big Ten championship. This could’ve very, very easily have been an Alabama vs. Ohio State Cotton Bowl.
C.O.W. shameless gimmick item …
The weekly five Overrated/Underrated aspects of the world
1) Overrated: Keenan Reynolds’ Heisman finish … Underrated: Leonard Fournette’s Heisman finish
2) Overrated: The massive show build-up until the Heisman announcement … Underrated: Derrick Henry’s terrific speech
3) Overrated: Christian McCaffery (like I seem to spell it way too often) … Underrated: Christian McCaffrey
4) Overrated: Chris Ash … Underrated: Greg Schiano
5) Overrated: All things Star Wars after the introduction of Ewoks … Underrated: IG-88
Sorry if this column sucked. It wasn’t my fault …
But at least it’s over. Like Tennessee head coach Butch Jones said after he received a $500,000 raise, “We all win with this.”
