College Football Point/Counterpoint: Should Montee Ball Win the Heisman Trophy?

For about the first half of the season, it looked as though the Big Ten would have its best shot at producing the first Heisman winner since Troy Smith in 2006. Then, two Hail Marys derailed the Heisman campaign of Russell Wilson and seemingly shut the door on a Big Ten player making the trip to New York for another year.

All the while, Montee Ball was doing what he always does: score touchdowns by the handful.

Ball leads the conference in rushing yards per game (135) and the nation in total touchdowns (38), a stat in which he is tantalizingly close to breaking the single season record held by Barry Sanders.

Ball's continued production, the closeness of Sanders' record and Wisconsin's Big Ten championship have all served to push the Badger running back prominently into the Heisman race late in the season. Ball will join Andrew Luck, Trent Richardson, Robert Griffin III and Tyrann Mathieu in New York this Saturday for the Heisman trophy presentation.

Will Montee Ball win the Heisman? Only time will tell.

Should he win it? Now, that's an argument we can sink our teeth into.  

Time for point/counterpoint.

Point: Montee Ball shouldn't win because his team isn't in the National Championship.

Unfortunately, we live in a college football world that equates the Heisman trophy with "the best quarterback/running back on the best team," and naturally, the best team is usually going to be one of the two teams playing for the BCS championship.

Cam Newton? In the BCS game. Trent Richardson? BCS game. Sam Bradford? Ditto. Tim Teb---er, well, the Tebow-child lives by his own rules. Keep going back, and you'll keep finding a correlation between Heisman winners and BCS title challengers.  

This was the entire reason that Ball's teammate Russell Wilson's Heisman campaign was ground to a halt after consecutive losses to Michigan State and Ohio State; with his shot at the title game gone, it was assumed the Heisman was out of reach.

Ball's team hasn't been in the national title race since mid-October, and it spent nearly a month waiting for the two teams in front of it to lose and open up a path to the Big Ten championship game.  

Can Ball be the first player since Tebow to win the Heisman without an appearance in the national championship game? Doubtful.

Counterpoint: Montee Ball should win the Heisman based on his statistical production.

A spot in the MNC* shouldn't be the deciding factor when it comes to the Heisman, especially when you consider just how statistically dominant Ball has been this year.

Ball's 135 rushing yards per game are fourth in the nation and first in the Big Ten by a wide margin. The only BCS conference back with more yards per game than Ball is LaMichael James.

However, the yards are only a part of the equation. The real place that Ball is doing work is on the scoreboard. Ball has 32 rushing touchdowns—seven more than the next closest—and only four players have more than 20. On top of that, Ball has six receiving touchdowns. All of that together puts Ball only one touchdown behind Barry Sanders' record for single season touchdowns with one game remaining.

That kind of record breaking production merits serious consideration.

Point: Montee Ball isn't really breaking Sanders' record.

The potential record for single-season touchdowns is impressive until you consider the asterisk that hangs over the entire situation. Ball has played 13 games so far this season and will play his 14th on January second against Oregon in the Rose Bowl.  

Sanders' record includes his 39 touchdowns in 11 regular season games; not even his five touchdowns from that year's Holiday Bowl count.

The fact that Ball will have had three more games to break the single-season touchdown record all but invalidates any real claim to the record in anything but a strictly technical sense. He scored the touchdowns, but it would be like the second guy to break the four-minute mile doing it with an eighth-mile head start. Sanders' name might get written over, but the accomplishment still remains.

In fact, the more impressive record in jeopardy this season is the one that Ball's teammate as well as one of his Heisman competitors are chasing: single-season pass efficiency. Currently, Robert Griffin III is on pace for the record—currently held by Colt Brennan at 186.0—and Russell Wilson is second by a narrow margin.  

This record, unlike the single-season touchdown record, is even more difficult to break with more games. The fact that RGIII (192.3) and Wilson (191.6) are a full five points better than the record is incredible.

That RGIII did all of that on a Baylor team that isn't nearly as stacked, as Wisconsin puts Ball's season in perspective.

Montee Ball has had an incredible season,and will most likely break a record that was deemed all but untouchable for many years.  

Should he get the Heisman? That depends on the arguments you make.

*(Mythical National Championship)