Cash and carry Heisman?
Blame all the money-grubbers for turning voting into wait-and-see the ordeal
I'm a Heisman Trophy voter, and, these days, I'm wondering. I'm wondering whom I'm voting for. I'm wondering what I'm voting for.
Auburn quarterback Cam Newton had me locked up. How many times do we get a college quarterback who's 6-6, 250, can run like a tailback and throw like, well, a quarterback?
Never.
Back in the day, there weren't even defensive linemen Newton's size.
What do I think about a gigantic dude who can run for 217 yards and two touchdowns one week and throw for 317 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions the next week? A kid in the top 10 in the nation in rushing, with a 182.8 passer rating?
I hand him the Heisman.
Except maybe not in Newton's case.
The 21-year-old from Atlanta already left the University of Florida after he was involved with a stolen laptop that, for some reason, went sailing out of his dorm window as police arrived. Newton left the Gators, spent time at a place called Blinn College in Texas, where he led his team to the 2009 national junior college title, and then, boom, he was hot recruiting stuff all over again.
The trouble is that now, more than halfway through the 2010 season, just after Sports Illustrated ran a glowing story about the young man and his apparent rebirth from the Florida unpleasantness and his mortal lock on the Heisman, it has been alleged that Newton went to Auburn only because his father was looking for the most money he could squeeze out of any college program.
The NCAA is a sanctimonious, unreflective cabal of white-haired, political back-scratchers, but it's darned certain as a group that ''amateur'' athletes getting money -- that is, anything other than the Nike sweatpants and often worthless scholarships to study things they may have no interest in -- is as evil as it gets here on Planet Football.
It's a great system
The system works great for the NCAA.
Until stuff like Cam Newton comes down the pike. Then the NCAA gets its underwear in a knot as big as an Eagle Scout's and declares the nastiness will be fought like a disease.
So those hundreds of promoters and profiteers rend their clothing in anguish.
But what are we Heisman voters supposed to do?
The best college football player?
What does that mean anymore?
The best player who's not likely to go to prison? (Ol' Maurice Clarett comes to mind, for some reason.)
The best player not likely to return his trophy? (Reggie Bush, hello.)
The best four-or-five-year-average veteran who plays for a program a child could direct? (Think Troy Smith, Jason White, Eric Crouch, Gino Torretta, etc.)
How about a quarterback who's so old he hasn't been carded in half a decade? (Chris Weinke, come on down!)
It's not a simple vote anymore, if it ever was, because again and again we are finding out that great college athletes are more interested in the money available in their sport than in the school spirit. Just like their coaches.
The allegations against Newton haven't been flat-out denied by anyone. Auburn's athletic director, Jay Jacobs, called the charges ''sad,'' but didn't say they were incorrect.
We don't know what Newton got to go to Auburn, if anything, other than a Tigers T-shirt and sharpened pencils.
But an interesting aspect here is that his dad, Cecil Newton, supposedly was the one setting the market for the son at between $100,000 and $180,000.
Constantly we lament the lack of a father figure -- or actual, biological, on-the-scene father -- for young African-American males.
Then we get one like Cecil, and it's hard not to wonder if young Newton would have been better off in the sports world without Pop. Supposedly Cam was very emotional when he called a recruiter at Mississippi State and said he couldn't attend that school because ''the money was too much'' somewhere else.
Auburn?
I don't know.
Same old, same old
But I know that these sinkholes of black-market college money-making take years to fully reveal, and by then a new market has moved in, suspect players have turned pro or prisoner, and nobody much cares.
You shouldn't break rules.
But rules shouldn't be absurd.
What do you think Newton's real value is to frenzied No. 2-ranked Auburn and its constituency?
One hundred-eighty grand?
A million sounds more reasonable.
But that's for others to ponder. I'm tired of the pondering.
My question is, who should I vote for?
Maybe no Heisman at all.
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cam newton discussing universities to attendby jeffreymcadam72,305 views
It doesn't matter. Who cares.
Same with Bush. He should have kept his trophy. Last time I checked, the game was played on the field.
oscarboy2323 1 year ago