Player A: Broke Herschel Walker's SEC rushing record this year, finishing with 1,986 yards and a nation-leading 23 rushing touchdowns. In the nine games in which he got at least 20 carries, he never had fewer than 127 yards, including 210 yards against LSU and 189 in the SEC Championship.
Player B: Broke Barry Sanders' three-decade record for all-purpose yards in a season, and did it in fewer touches. He saved his best performance for last, finishing with 207 rushing yards, 105 receiving yards and 461 all-purpose yards against USC in the Pac-12 Championship Game. That's the fifth-most ever in a game. His 3,496 all-purpose yards are 1,000 more than anyone else has this season.
Player C: The quarterback of the Playoff's No. 1 seed shook off a 2014 injury to lead Clemson to an undefeated season in 2015. He gets the job done in multiple ways, passing for 3,512 yards and 30 touchdowns, ranking No. 3 in pass completion percentage, rushing for 887 yards and 11 touchdowns, and ranking No. 7 in combined quarterback yardage against Power 5 opponents.
Now, If you had to pick which one of these players had the best season, or was the best player in college football, who would you choose, and why? Would you look at the impact they had on the season? What they did during the year that made them valuable? Or would you look at where the team is headed, or how they finished?
In my opinion, the best player of the three resumes presented above belongs to Player B, or Stanford's Christian McCaffery. What he was able to do this year was nothing short of spectacular, breaking a record that has withstood generation after generation of great players trying to achieve it. And to do so in fewer carries, it's unbelievable. Clearly a player who has that kind of ability had to have won the award for the best player in college football.
But he didn't.
On December 12, the Heisman Trophy, awarded to the nation's best player, was given to Derrick Henry of Alabama. His resume, if you are curious, is that of Player A. Still a successful, record breaking season, but in my eyes and the eyes of many others like myself, not on par with what McCaffery accomplished.
The question deserves to be asked, what happened? Well, same things that usually always happen. When it comes to the Heisman voting. But there are a few factors in particular that come into play with McCaffery and this year's voting.
A few factors could have played in. First, the "West-Coast stigma," a perceived notion that fans and voters don't stay up late enough to watch football games that take place on the West Coast, with contests not beginning sometimes until the waning hours of the night. The numbers are there, but these players don't get to go through the "eye-test" that the Midwest and Southern players do, where we can SEE what they are doing every week, and put numbers to witnessed performance. It has hurt West Coast players in the past, where great players for schools who don't necessarily command national attention on a regular basis are recognized for their achievements, but left out of the grander national discussion. (See: Andrew Luck, #1 overall draft pick, two-time Heisman snub.) Since 2005 only one player past the Central Time Zone has won the Heisman (Marcus Mariota, 2014) and the other ten players have come from universities in the South, or Midwest. The Bias to gravitate more towards these players is clear.
Second, something that hurt McCaffery and many others before him is the idea that the Heisman is no longer a "best player in the country" award, but a "best player on best team" award. In the last eleven years, eight of the eleven Heisman Winners have been on a team ranked #1 or #2 in the country. It's one thing to recognize a player for the outstanding season that they have had, but when it goes to the best player on a top team, is it an outstanding achievement award, or a glorified MVP trophy? A better question, is that what we want it to be? Stanford had an OUTSTANDING year, but came up just short of the college football playoff, and got the invite to New York for the ceremony. If he would have gotten into the playoffs, a feat he had no direct control over, would he have won? Why would that matter? Why award a player who had a good year, but not as great as McCaffery's? Because he plays for Alabama? Because he was near the top of the polls all year long, or played "tougher teams?" The logic is flawed, history shows the advantage in a situation like that will always go to a player on an elite team.
870 voters get a say in who wins the Heisman Trophy, most of those voters embedded in the Midwest. With so many voices located in one area of the country, how can it be fair to anyone else who resides outside of those lines? What are they looking at? The same thing we are. Games played on this side of the county, with a few from the West-Coast sprinkled in, usually games that don't showcase the players they should showcase. The deck is definitly stacked against players who don't have the chance to be on national TV every weekend to impress voters the way some candidates are.
The Heisman Trophy award, and the process of winning it, is lopsided. Being a star on a good team gives you the inside track, being on ESPN every week gives you another one. Sometimes, the player who most deserves to raise the award, sits in the stands, for reasons beyond their control. Unless something is changed, this is a pattern we will continue to see in the future. It's often said that the best player and the most deserving player aren't always the same, but for the sake of this prestigious award, we need to change that.
