Heisman Reality: Best Guys Don't Always Win

Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell wasn’t invited to the Heisman Trophy Ceremony, this Saturday, and coach Mike Leach isn’t all that happy about it.
Only three contenders — Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, Texas’ Colt McCoy and Florida’s Tim Tebow — were invited. Leach says something is amiss.
Yeah, his sense of reality.
“If Graham is not invited to the Heisman, they ought to quit giving out the award. It’s a shameless example of politics ruling over performance,” Leach said on ESPN.com.
You mean like BCS bowl invitations?
He ought to try coaching in the Mountain West or WAC.
Besides, that’s life. The best guys don’t always win. And not everybody gets invited. I’d worry more about bowl invitations and team accolades than individual ones, if I were him.
But there is some good news for Harrell — he doesn’t have to sit through another banquet in a tuxedo. If he did get invited now, he knows he wouldn’t win, so why go?
That’s the thing about award ceremonies. They’re only really fun when you’re the honoree.
If it makes Harrell feel any better –which it shouldn’t — I remember sitting in the sports information office at BYU in 1979. I was waiting for word on whether Marc Wilson would win the Heisman. He was notified via telephone that he had finished third. No banquet. No TV. No video highlights.
Charles White won it that year.
Maybe they didn’t even have a Heisman dinner back then, I don’t know.
Suffice it to say that while Harrell passed for a whopping 4,147 yards this year, Wilson had a not-too-shabby 3,720 yards in 1979, but didn’t get much of a ceremony for his trouble.
But he’s still in the College Football Hall of Fame.