College Football Awards 2011: 4 Player Awards We Can Get Rid of

If you're one of those people who loves sports awards shows and you're just too antsy to wait for the Heisman ceremony on Saturday night, then you're in luck, because tonight, the annual College Football Awards Show will take place from Atlantic Dance Hall in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.

The festivities kick off at 9 pm ET and the show will be broadcast live on ESPN.

By my calculation, there are about 150 (yes, I rounded up a little bit) different college football awards given out every December for just about every different thing you can think of.

Best coach, best quarterback, best running back, best kicker, best Gatorade bottle holder—if it has something to do with football, there's probably an award and a special fancy dinner for it.

It's almost gotten to the point, though, where we're just far too overcrowded with awards.

The days of having one All-American team (not 100 different ones), and the Heisman Trophy are long gone.

With that in mind, here's a look at a few college football awards that I think we could either get rid of or change for the better.

The Maxwell Award

The Maxwell Award is annually awarded to the best player in college football, but the only problem is, we already have that award, and it's called the Heisman Trophy.

Honestly, if you asked any great college football player which award they would rather have on their shelf, the Heisman or the Maxwell, I have a feeling that exactly zero of them would say, "Every day when I was growing up, all I could think about was one day holding the Maxwell Award in my hands."

It doesn't help that the voters for the award often whiff on truly giving it to the "best" player in college football, as you can see by just taking a look at some of the recent winners such as Brady Quinn, Jason White and Ken Dorsey.

There's no need for redundant "best player" awards.

We're all fine with just having the Heisman Trophy. That's really all we care about anyways.

The Rimington Trophy

Center is one of the most valuable, but oftentimes, most underappreciated positions on the field, and I’m all for showing centers a little love every now and then.

But honestly, how do you even go about saying who the best center in the country actually is?

To really determine something like that, you would need to spend a large chunk of time sitting in a film room, analyzing every single top center in the country’s blocking technique, his footwork and his huddle presence from the entire season, and that's not a job anybody wants.

If there’s truly a great center that’s deserving of an award, that’s great; just let him compete for the Outland Trophy, which is annually given to the top lineman in college football. Heck, Dave Rimington himself was a two-time Outland winner.

We don’t have a best offensive tackle award, or a best offensive guard award for a reason, and it’s the same reason we don’t need an award for the best center in the country.

The Special Teams Awards

Yes, kickers and punters get their own awards too.

The Lou Groza Award is annually given to the best kicker in the country, while the Ray Guy Award is annually given to the top punter.

If it were up to me, though, I would combine the two awards and just have one award for the most outstanding special teams player in the country, instead of splitting it up between kickers and punters.

And these are another bunch of voters who sometimes completely whiff on giving it to the most deserving player.

Someone needs to explain to me how USC kicker Andre Heidari and LSU punter Brad Wing weren’t even selected as finalists for the two awards this year. I know they’re both freshman, but they’ve also been the two best and most consistent special teams players in the country this season.

The Lombardi Award

I don’t know if we need to actually abolish the Lombardi Award, but we definitely need to trim down the criteria.

The award is annually given to the best offensive lineman, defensive lineman or linebacker in the country.

I’m just not really sure how you go about picking a deserving winner out of such a diverse crop of players.

Plus, the award is supposed to include offensive linemen, but it’s most often given to a defensive front seven player. We haven’t seen an offensive linemen win since 1995 and 1996 when Orlando Pace took home the trophy two years in a row.

I’d be fine with making the Lombardi Award just for the best linebacker in the country. That would seem to work better.