December 13, 2009

Ingram edges Gerhart for Heisman

From the NYT:
Ingram received 1,304 total votes in the closest contest in the award’s 75-year history, beating Stanford running back Toby Gerhart by 28 points.

To win, Gerhart needed to have scored five touchdowns instead of just four against Cal in Stanford's 34-28 late season loss.

Personally, I would have voted for the the big Cameroonian lineman Suh, but it was fun following Gerhart from earlier than almost everybody else this season, and acting like I actually knew something about college football.

My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

28 comments:

The Bear said...

To win, Gerhart needed to have scored five touchdowns instead of just four against Cal in Stanford's 34-28 late season loss.

How about scoring one touchdown instead of zero against a dreadful Wake Forest team?

Steve Sailer said...

Wake Forest was 5-7, while going 0-5 in games decided by 3 points or less. They were a slightly above average team. Gerhart had 18 carries for 82 yards against them in his worst game of the season.

jody said...

as i watch the players that some NFL teams deliberately put out there as starting quarterbacks, i chuckle to myself about how absolutely certain, how positively sure so many experts are that tim tebow cannot possibly perform at a level even equal to the worst of them.

steve sometimes posts about christmas carols, and how there are no new ones. rest easy, steve. i've written a new one for you, and it goes along to the melody of "silent night". everybody crowd around now, as mel kiper and the ESPN staff treat us to a classic carol this holiday season:

fullback, tight end
you can't play, quarterback
white athletes are zero dimensional
we already know you have no potential
might as well block for some scrubs
might as well block for some scrubs

fullback, tight end
you can't throw, you run slow
terrelle pryor will play, but you won't
we already know that you'll get own't
might as well quit football right now
might as well quit right now

fullback, tight end
know you place, we'll tell it to your face
baseball would have been such a better choice
we'll laugh at your release until we lose our voice
white athletes are such a joke
white athletes are such a joke

eggnog for all!

Anonymous said...

Yikes, hope this wasn't directed at me. I would have been happy to have seen Gerhart or Suh win it (both fine players). Im delighted for Ingram and Bama' because in all their history (12 national titles, 22 SEC titles), they have never had a Heisman winner despite many very good players (Bart Starr, Namath, Stabler, John Hannah, Ozzie Newsome, Cornelius Bennett, Derrick Thomas, Bob Baumhower, Marty Lyons, Richard Todd, Tony Nathan, Shaun Alexander, Bobby Humphrey, Chris Samuels, etc.)

Gerhart would have ran for many yards in Bama's offense, and I think he will be a nice pro power runner in the mode of Brandon Jacobs or Stephen Jackson. Suh has one of the most impressive physiques one will ever see on a 300-lb man. These were all "good" kids (Ingram has been very classy all year long in interviews and seems to be a genuinely nice kid).


If you want to think about a bad aftertaste in your mouth in conjuction with the heisman, think about Peyton Manning getting outvoted for Charles Woodson in 1997. Manning was and is a better player, and should have won. This is a Tide fan saying that, which is difficult because Manning carved us up like a turkey for a couple of years (his brother and daddy both hung a bunch of points on us in their best seasons also).



Jody, Im with you on Tebow. Strong arm, big, pretty agile, definitely durable, tons of will, good attitude, obviously intelligent. What is missing in that package to some is eluding me also.

Sparks123 said...

It may be trite, but the Heisman truly is a team award. Ingram's team is 12-0 and heading to the National Championship Game and Gerhart's team is 8-4 and playing in the Sun Bowl. Given how close the vote was, Gerhart would have almost certainly won the Heisman if Stanford was 12-0 (or even 10-2).

The award is basically "the best offensive player from a top-five team." Carson Palmer is the only Heisman winner from this decade whose team had more than one loss.

Anonymous said...

Off topic, but apparently child services paid Tiger Woods a visit. The police have to present evidence and get a warrant approved by a judge to enter someone's home and child protective services can enter based on a rumor of a rumor. Someone needs to put those Nazis in check.

Truth said...

"What is missing in that package to some is eluding me also."

Relatively weak arm, lousy mechanics, slow release, and a penchant for running over linebackers, which in the NFL will have him looking out of his earhole by the second quarter

Anonymous said...

You guys really need to open your eyes about Tebow....Mel Kiper makes a living evaluating talent and says he can't/won't play qb at all in the pros- in fact no legit talent evaluators believe he will be successful at qb....of course you have the Lou Holtz types who spout off w/out really knowing. It's not a conspiracy either Jody, bc I think there are already some successful white qbs in the pros- it just looks like Tebow will not join their ranks.


Dan in DC

Anonymous said...

a penchant for running over linebackers, which in the NFL will have him looking out of his earhole by the second quarter

Apparently he's already had a concussion?

jody said...

"Relatively weak arm, lousy mechanics, slow release, and a penchant for running over linebackers, which in the NFL will have him looking out of his earhole by the second quarter"

of course! above all else, it is one THOUSAND percent certain that tim tebow cannot learn or improve in any way. wait, scratch that. there is a negative ONE MILLION percent chance that tebow could EVER even take a snap from an NFL center without instantly self sacking himself. heck, if tim tebow is allowed to play starting quarterback in the NFL after being a backup quarterback for one or two seasons, the fabric of space and time may possibly explode.

all he did was play NCAA football at a high level for 3 years. that's nothing for a white athlete. he might as well have been playing field hockey, because it is SCREAMINGLY OBVIOUS he can't play football. he certainly does not have the NCAA performance history, measurements, or brainpower of jamarcus russell. every expert and every NFL scout said so.

there's not the slightest possibility that he could play as well as tavaris jackson or josh freeman. no chance. not in a million years. never, ever, EVER. case fcking closed.

OhioStater said...

A couple of things:

1. The Heisman is irrelevant to me since winning the Heisman doesn't correlate into success in the NFL. I saw a study ranking the Outland Trophy (for best lineman) as the college award with the greatest positive expectation for success in the NFL, not the Heisman.

2. A large number of Heisman winners play at a position they cannot and will not play in the NFL. Charlie Ward, Tim Couch, Tommie Frazier all come to mind. That's the size of the gap between the NFL and college football.

3. If the perception is Tebow is not quarterback material, that has nothing to do with affirmative action since the best quarterbacks in the league are white and Tebow is falling short of that standard. Mechanics? The standard is Brady. Arm strength? The standard is Favre. Accuracy? The standard is Brees. Toughness? The standard is Philip Rivers. Intelligence? The standard is Peyton Manning. No matter how you evaluate Tebow, if he's not QB material, it's not because the media thinks a black guy is better.

Jokah Macpherson said...

"Gerhart had 18 carries for 82 yards against them in his worst game of the season."

It should also be pointed out that Ingram's worst game was way worse than Gerhart's worst game. Sparks123 is right, though; the Heisman is an award for the best player on the best team.

Steve Sailer said...

But why should a forecast of success in the NFL be the measuring stick for the college award?

I particularly liked college football back in the 1970s when many of the stars were 5'-9" option quarterbacks who were great all-around athletes but were way too short to think about playing anything in the NFL other than punt returner: Mark Harmon, John Sciarra, Jack Mildren, JC Watts, Rodney Allison, etc.

Truth said...

"of course! above all else, it is one THOUSAND percent certain that tim tebow cannot learn or improve in any way. wait, scratch that. there is a negative ONE MILLION percent chance that tebow could EVER even take a snap from an NFL center without instantly self sacking himself...."

Jody, Jody, let's not have a coronary here. From what my research tells me, most NFL Qbs are white. Are you getting 10% of Tebow's paycheck or what?

And BTW, I think he may turn out to be a good QB. The team that drafts him will have to be patient with him though, he has a lot of deficiencies.

He reminds me of McNabb, albeit with a very weak arm.

jody said...

one thing we know for sure, is that tebow could never compete with the invincible black superhumans in the NFL. tim tebow played all of his NCAA football in the SEC, a lily white, notoriously weak conference. i think there are only 1 or 2 players from the SEC in the NFL. 3 good years of play in the SEC, which is clearly devoid of any talented afroletes, could hardly be considered a good qualification for NFL play. now, if tim tebow had played in 1 or 2 NCAA championship games, against, oh, ohio state or oklahoma, then he would have already learned that he had no chance against NFL caliber blackletes. unfortunately, he didn't play in any NCAA championship games against NFL drafted blackletes.

this is the same problem that jacob hester faces in the NFL. he too played all of his NCAA football in the exceedingly bad, black athlete devoid SEC conference. LSU doesn't even have a single black player, which is the only reason they had to resort to letting hester carry the ball for 1000 yards his senior year. if only LSU could have recruited some afroletes, they could have avoided that mistake. hester never, not once, carried the ball against NFL drafted blacks, because, as i mentioned before, barely any player from the SEC makes it to the NFL. if only hester had played against invincible black superhumans before going to the NFL, he might have learned that he had no business carrying the football.

Vernunft said...

And another comment thread degenerates into weird racist insecurity...

Anonymous said...

Jody- you have de-railed....you're making Truth look rational

Chuck said...

Jody,

how did you degenerate this discussion from the very plausible case that Steve made - that if any white player is going to feel the brunt of racism going forward into the NFL it will be Gerhart - to rallying for Tim Tebow?

Ben Franklin said...

The movie The Blind Side is reported headed for a domestic box office of $230 million (looks like it has reached $150 million or more already). Not sure how this stacks up against the predictions made here, but I’d guess it is more than Whiskey/Testing99/EvilNeocon predicted.

W Baker said...

Chuck said,

"how did you degenerate this discussion from the very plausible case that Steve made - that if any white player is going to feel the brunt of racism going forward into the NFL it will be Gerhart - to rallying for Tim Tebow?"

Because Steve is only partially right. Gerhart will feel the brunt of racism in the NFL. He won't be there in any significant roll for more than a year or two. If he is, he'll be on special teams. And there ain't nothing wrong with that.

Tebow, according to some in the Florida, the only son of god, will be fine in the NFL - no matter how many "scouts" like Mel Kiper bay otherwise. It'll take him a season to adjust, but, as Jody says, the dumbest, weakest kid on a sorry team in the worst conference will do okay at the next level.

(I did see a t-shirt in Tallahassee a few weeks ago that said, 'And God so loved the world, he gave his only son'.... with a picture of TT on the front!)

The Bear said...

The award is basically "the best offensive player from a top-five team." Carson Palmer is the only Heisman winner from this decade whose team had more than one loss.

Well, this simply isn't true. Tebow won in '07 on a team that lost 4 games.

Wake Forest was 5-7, while going 0-5 in games decided by 3 points or less. They were a slightly above average team. Gerhart had 18 carries for 82 yards against them in his worst game of the season.

But Wake lost to Clemson by 35. Spiller ran for over a 100 yards and a couple of touchdowns on just 9 carries. Spiller's worst game was against a SEC opponent, South Carolina (18 yards rushing), a team Ingram torched for over 200 yards.

Having spent 3 years at Camp Pendleton, I know how upset you west coast guys get about "east coast bias," but, in this case, as much as I would love to say the white kid is as good as Ingram and Spiller, he just isn't.

OhioStater said...

Well college is supposed to prepare students for life after college.

There are honors like Phi Beta Kappa and Law Review that do not directly translate to success after school, but business schools are ranked by average starting salary of its graduates, and law schools are ranked by the percentage of students to pass the bar. If you pay $100,000 to send a student to a nice school, it is implicit that student will make more money than if he went to a cheaper school.

I think student athletes are no different than normal students and college should prepare the best of them for life in the NFL. It is silly to rank a student as best football player in the country, unless he is the best football player in the country. If this player does not play well in the NFL, he was not the best player in the country.

If the Heisman does not honor the best player in the country, then the Heisman is nothing more than "which player in the national championship game earned the most fantasy points" which is essentially an honor reserved for the best high school players, or the best ones without character issues, lucky to play for a top BCS school.

So is the Heisman award an "academic" award like Phi Beta Kappa, or is it business school?

Truth said...

Jody, you are a strange young man; but your George Costanza-esque rants are the funniest thing on this site.

You should write for the Larry David Show.

Justin said...

This is the point, for those who aren't getting Jody's point: athletic quarterbacks who are BLACK, with far LESS skills and success than Tebow, are given chances to be QBs in the NFL without the negative commentary. Why?

Unless you can answer that question, you have no right calling these comments "racist", "conspiracy" or "insecure".

Jeff Lee said...

The Heisman voting system is pretty skewed and more of an ancient relic than the Electoral College system, but at least there's little media bias because Suh was getting the most hype leading up to the vote. McCoy finishing ahead of Suh shows that team records matter more.

Anonymous said...

Tim Tebow is my favorite player by far in college football. I believe he has a chance to be a good starting qb in the league. That does not change the fact that most scouts believe he will be an H-back and be drafted in the 3rd-5th round. These scouts make their money on how often they are right and the reputations that come with their predictions. Mel Kiper has been scouting for 30 plus years and is very knowledgeable and respected. Just because you put the word scout in parenthesis does not change this fact. I hope you are right and I am wrong but some of you sound whiny and insecure....won't use the term racist bc I don't even know what that term means anymore.



Dan in DC

Truth said...

"This is the point, for those who aren't getting Jody's point: athletic quarterbacks who are BLACK, with far LESS skills and success than Tebow, are given chances to be QBs in the NFL without the negative commentary. Why?"

Like who?

It is not "negative commentary" it's called "scouting". Jason White, Gino Torreta, Steve Spurrier, Ty Detmer and Danny Wuerfell all won Heismans, they all played in the NFL and they all sucked. What they did simply did not translate to what was necessary of an NFL QB. Period.

Rich Gannon on the other hand played in a funky 1-AA offense, got drafed in the fourth round and won a superbowl.

Tyler Thigpen played in 1-AA got drafted on his athleticism, and played fairly well last year.

Matt Cassel, was buried so far down on the USC depth chart that he moved to TIGHT END as a junior, still made a camp and is now a starter.

Charley Ward on the other hand had to go play basketball after his Heisman, Antwaan Randle-El got moved to wide receiver, Pat White who was fantastic, a heisman finalist and went 4-0 in bowl games lasted until the 44th pick. Is that "negative commentary?"

As I said, I think Tebow has a solid chance to be a good NFL QB. I think he will probably be the 5th-6th QB drafted, he will probably even go behind LeFevour who played in the MAC...and all the guys ahead of him will probably be white.

If you have the goods you get a chance, if you don't, you don't

STOP FUCKING WHINING, ALBINO SHARPTON!

Justin said...

Truth: there is no shame in whining when there is a real injustice being done. If you don't see the racial injustices and double standards at work in football, I suspect you really haven't looked into it. I agree that the big problem is NOT at the QB position, obviously that is the one that still remains overwhelmingly White friendly, dispite noticable affirmative action efforts. We should be much more concerned with Gerhart's treatment. The case for anti-White discrimination at the tailback position is overwhelming.