Texas Passed Over Again...Sam Bradford Wins Heisman over Colt McCoy,Tim Tebow

Sam Bradford, Oklahoma's great sophomore quarterback, won the 2008 Heisman Trophy in New York last night.  Colt McCoy of Texas finished second and Tim Tebow of Florida third in an extremely close three-way contest.

In a year when the BCS has rendered a truly inconclusive decision by selecting Florida and Texas to play in its championship game, the choice of Bradford over McCoy and Tebow leaves people wondering if Heisman voters have left fans just as confused.

When Bradford was announced as the winner and McCoy forced a smile while shaking the Sooner's hand, one had to wonder if he said to himself, "I guess the voters forgot about the day we played Oklahoma and I completed 28-of-35 and led the Longhorns to a win.  The same day Bradford put up those two picks."

Don't you think McCoy thought about the 576 rushing yards and the 10 critical rushing touchdowns he scored this year while Bradford only rushed for 65 yards this season?

When Tebow put that smile on his face and congratulated Bradford, don't you think he said to himself, "Hey! that's my trophy you're walking away with, pal.  I led my team to the SEC championship and when we play Oklahoma, I'm going to show everybody who's the real Heisman Trophy winner."

Congratulations, Sam Bradford!  You're a great player and had a great year, but this isn't about you.  It's about the Heisman Trophy and how it's based on the kind of subjective reasoning that produces an outcome resembling a popularity contest like a vote by fourth graders for class president.

It's about taking three outstanding young men, great players, and putting two of them in such an awkward position that memories of Sarah Palin explaining her foreign policy to Katie Couric have come back in Technicolor.

The Heisman Trophy, like the Oscars, Grammys and the Nobel Peace Prize, is low on substance and high on glitz.

We don't need this award anymore, but the execs at ESPN like it.  They like it so much that they devote an hour to it instead of the half hour the other network had done.

This award is all about what college football is not: the individual over the team!

The Heisman Trophy doesn't measure what it professes to represent: the best college football player in the country.  I like to think the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft takes care of that.

This award is always given to either a quarterback, a running back, or a receiver.  Only once in its history has a defensive player won the trophy.  In the late 1990s, Michigan defensive back Charles Woodson edged out Peyton Manning.

The voting process has always been tainted.  Besides being totally subjective, the voting has turned into a local chauvinistic ritual where voters favor candidates from their region of the country. 

The Heisman voting represents a popularity contest with a talent segment!

I think the pros have it right.  When they choose an MVP, they don't have a ceremony.

They announce it after the season ends...it gets a minute on the news and it's over.  They don't glorify it, because I think the pros know that the game is about team..not one player.

Woody Allen had it right!   The great writer and director made a lot of award-winning movies.  When his name was called for winning the Oscar for the movie "Annie Hall," he wasn't in the house to accept it.  Woody was in some tavern on the east side of New York playing the clarinet.