SportsGirl

It’s all about the collegiate efforts today. With the Heisman Trophy being awarded last night for the first time in history to sophomore Tim Tebow, and with college basketball being in full swing, I find it appropriate to record some thoughts on the amateur sports ranks.

First, we’ll start with Heisman presentation. I knew Tebow would win, and really, he deserves to if you’re awarding the trophy to the best college player, which is how it’s supposed to be decided. Chase Daniels played himself out of contention by losing twice to Oklahoma. Patrick White did the same, losing to Pittsburgh in the final game before the votes were tallied. Now, granted, White was hurt in that game and the loss doesn’t sit squarely on his shoulders; if anything his absence in that game underscores his importance to the team, but the Heisman is not the MVP award. Injury is the same thing that prevented Dennis Dixon from getting more attention. Colt Brennan didn’t really ever seem to stand a chance. It was almost as if the Heisman voters felt badly that they knew Hawaii would get left out of the BCS Championship game so they decided to throw Brennan’s name into contention as a consolation prize. This year’s Heisman was always a contest between Tebow and Darren “Run DMC” McFadden. McFadden would hands-down win the award for best nickname in football, but sadly, that’s not a category in consideration for the Heisman. McFadden will be an excellent running back in the pro’s, despite the knock on him that he runs too vertically, but you can’t ignore Tebow’s touch down numbers, especially when you think about how many of them were rushing touch downs. So he is the victor and has earned a little breathing room. Which, after that speech last night, it sounds like he needs!

Now, onto the college basketball season. In an attempt to fill the void left on Saturday afternoons for me now that college football is on hiatus, I watched a little b-ball. Michigan was playing Duke yesterday and I had hopes that maybe someone had re-wound the time to 1989 when U of M actually had a decent hoops team. Alas, I was sorely disappointed. I remember the announcers yesterday commenting that it was somewhat impressive that Michigan was only 5 points behind Duke, at Cameron Arena, and that was maybe 5 minutes into the game. Then I watched Mich miss about 5 shots in a row, completely fail to rebound on offense or defense, and the lead widened to about 20 points without blinking. At that point, I changed the channel. Looks like the basketball season will be even less kind to U of M than the football season, if that’s even possible. Although, the hoops team does have a coach, which at the moment the football team can’t even say, so they do have the leg up there.