OSU’s Offense Vs. The Nation

Photo Attribution:Emily Nielsen

Big thanks to one of my readers (honestly can’t remember who) for the idea for this post.

College football’s most prestegious, not to mention awkward (Herbstreit handed out more awkward handshakes than the 12th man on an NBA bench), non-Heisman awards were doled out last Thursday night in Orlando, Florida.

The country’s third best team sent exactly one representative to collect a trophy he likely sewed up in January with this press conference.

To highlight what a political process the college football awards season is, consider: Baylor’s Kendall Wright had significantly better stats than Justin Blackmon throughout the season and wasn’t even a finalist for the award while Brandon Weeden and Bob Griffin had the same stats and Griffin was the runaway winner for the Heisman while Weeden watched from his couch.

The point of this post is not to opine on who was left off of which ballot, but rather to show that OSU is indeed competing with that nation’s elite at nearly every position.

Shall we? Let’s go.

Heisman (no idea what this means anymore)
 
We’ve gone over this ad nauseam, but the fact remains that OSU pumped out two guys this year who were at least talked about (if not voted for) in the Heisman race. You want to talk abou things that are big in recruiting? Take a ballot with your school receiving Heisman votes into an 18-year old’s house and see what happens. Heck, bring it over to my house and see what happens.

Maxwell Award (outstanding player)
 
What am I missing here? Luck goes 11-1, Weeden goes 11-1, Weeden’s numbers are…well…just look at them. I understand Luck didn’t have the weapons Weeden did, but how do we know Weeden’s weapons weren’t simply a product of Weeden doing Weeden things? Do we have empirical evidence of any of OSU’s stars (Blackmon, Cooper, Randle, Moore et al) being great before Weeden took over at the helm? We don’t? Okay.

Doak Walker Award (best running back)

One of the great travesties of this season (as much as something happening in the context of the season of a division one sport can be categorized as a “travesty”) was how greatly Joe Randle got overshadowed by Weeden2Blackmon. He didn’t get nearly the carries Richardson got, but I think his per carry average says it all. Randle is absolutely a top ten running back in the country and he gets two more years to prove it.

Fred Biletnikoff Award (best wide receiver)

I thought Berry Tramel made a good point in one of his blog posts the other day – if Deion never happened, OSU could be looking at a school three-peat for the Biletnikoff. OSU has become a premiere place for wide receivers to become great, which is what makes Kendall Sanders’ de-commitment all the more curious.

John Mackey Award (best tight end)

Okay, so they can’t be elite at every position. It’s too bad too, because I think Horton (and Youman for that matter) is an elite athlete who kind of gets lost in the hurry-up, spread-it-out offense. Stick him on Stanford or USC and he’d have 30 catches for 350 and 6-7 TD.

Lou Groza Award (best kicker)

 
One of the running jokes among college football bloggers this season has been that schools need to start paying kickers more money (see: Boise, Alabama, OU, etc). I know Sharp missed the big one up in Ames, but he’s done an incredible job replacing Bailey and his numbers are up there with anyone else in the nation.