Goodbye 2011

Another year down in the world of sports, and while I saw only one title this year, here's hoping to many more in 2012! Now a recap of 2011.

My teams in 2011:

• Spurs: Ran to the best record in the Western Conference, only to run into the Grizzlies (best 8th seed I can ever remember) and see another year in the Duncan era roll by without a title. In a brash, and in my opinion smart, move, the Spurs saw an opportunity to get the best SF in the draft and traded George Hill to the Pacers for the rights to Kawhi Leonard, Erazem Lorbek and Davis Bertans. The latter two will hopefully develop into useful future pieces, but the key was Kawhi. Finally, the season got underway yesterday and the Spurs laid the smackdown on the Grizz to move to 1-0 and make a statement that they are still legit in the West. GO SPURS GO!
• Cowboys: Drafted Tyron Smith (who at 21, is their best o-lineman...ugh) and DeMarco Murray, the only difference makers. They proceeded to enter the 2011 season and set a new record for amount of games causing me to lose my mind and then get sucked back in. This team now enters next Sunday's game with the Giants needing just a win to win the NFC East and get into the playoffs and a most likely first round rematch with the Lions. At this point, if you told me 100 different scores between Cowboys win 52-0 and Giants win 52-0, I would believe you every time. This team will find a way to make this game unbearable in some fashion.
• Tigers: This team used 2011 as both a foray into the playoffs and a stepping stone towards future successes. They are now the cream of the AL Central as the Twins and White Sox retool and the Indians and Royals continue to mature. Never have I been more excited for a Tigers team as I am at the end of 2011. With the bulk of the 2011 AL Central Champs and ALCS participants returning, this Tigers team looks to move forward with a better bullpen and same strong offense and rotation that carried them last year. I look forward to what 2012 brings for the Motor City Kitties.
• Red Wings: Another year, another playoff loss to the San Jose Sharks. It was tough, and made even more so by the retirement of Brian Rafalski (WYANDOTTE NATIVE!). But the greatest defenseman of our generation (if you dare say Satan Spawn, we will have problems) returned to the Wings for one more year, and just like that, title contenders once more. Jimmy Howard seems to have taken that next step towards being a franchise goalie, Pavel and Hank seem to have more help this season in the forms of Mule and Flip, and the 4th line is the strongest it's been post-lockout. If the rest of the blue line can strengthen and the Wings can figure out their road struggles, the Winged Wheel looks to be as good a Stanley Cup contender as any in the NHL.
• University of Michigan: What a year. The basketball team was a buzzer beater away from knocking Duke out of the NCAA tourney and look to be ahead of where they expected to be this year with the strong play of freshman point Trey Burke. I expect another first or second round loss in the NCAA tourney before the arrival of Tre Robinson, Nik Stauskas, and Mitch McGary turn Michigan into a legit contender. The hockey team lost in the National Championship game in excruciating fashion, then saw most of that team graduate. The result: a terrible first half of the season and a second Michigan team in three years threatening to miss the tournament. Finally, the football team started the year with the worst bowl performance I've ever seen, which led to the firing of RR and the hiring of Brady Hoke (and even better, Greg Mattison!). This season's team put 10 wins on the board, including wins over ND and OSU, and are playing Jan 3 in the Sugar Bowl against VT. With a top 5 recruiting class coming in, this team has a bright future moving forward.
• AC Milan: Last but certainly not least, the rossoneri lost in the first knockout round of the CL AGAIN, to an EPL squad AGAIN. Yet, that really wasn't anything too bad to deal with as Milan played their way to their first Scudetto since 2004, moving two league titles away from that second star. They've carried that strong play into the first half of this season, sitting atop the Serie A table at the holiday break. With a second half battle with Juve for the Scudetto looming, as well as another CL knockout first round matchup with an EPL squad on the horizon, the first half of 2012 promises to be full of great soccer. The rumor mill is also in full gear, with rumors of Tevez, Keita, and others heading to the San Siro to play in the red and black. Honestly, the future is bright with or without those names, as Nocerino, Thiago Silva, and my personal fave, KPB, look to carry our boys to another Scudetto and CL title! FORZA MILAN!

2011 brought great joy (Tigers playoffs/Milan Scudetto/UM beat OSU) and great heartbreak (Spurs/Wings/UM Hockey losses), but one thing is for sure: it was a great year of sports as 2012 looms full of promise for the Seidman's teams! I hope it looks as rosy for y'all as well! Happy New Year!

The Seidman's Heisman Ballot

Every year, the most prestigious award in all of college football is awarded to a single football player. Some years, there is no controversy, other years, plenty. But for the first time in a while, we enter December where, not only are there multiple plausible candidates to win, there is no one single front-runner. The media will want you to know that Andrew Luck is the best player in the country, cool, that award is known as the Maxwell Award (awarded to the best player in college football). The SEC talking heads will want you to know that Trent Richardson is the best player in the SEC, awesome, give him the SEC Player of the Year award. The B1G people will scream that Montee Bell is closing in on Barry Sander's seemingly unbreakable touchdown record, great, I look forward to his Doak Walker acceptance speech. Mid-major fans will complain that Kellen Moore is getting overlooked for putting together another great season, this time against even tougher competition than ever before (sorry Kellen, blame Casey Pachall). Defense proponents will tout Tyrann Mathieu ("This is the honey badger...it's pretty badass, look, it runs all over the place!") And finally, Big 12 and all that Texas media will want you to take a look at the big season put up by RGIII (Wait, Baylor has a football team...with a good football player on it?). This, my friends, is the deepest, most well-rounded group of possible candidates I can ever remember. All of those players mentioned above have a legitimate case as the most outstanding player in college football this season. So I will attempt to break down this race, flesh out the leaders, and present my top five ballot, with my winner.

The Mission Statement

You cannot analyze the award without first seeing what the award itself purports to represent, so here is the mission statement from the Heisman Trophy Trust:

The Heisman Memorial Trophy annually recognizes the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard work.

This statement makes me believe that the award is not to be rewarded to the best football player, but rather the most outstanding football player, a key difference. It also tells me that big wins matter ("whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence") and that the criteria is limited to the field of play ("whose performance best exhibits the pursuit...with integrity"). The integrity is linked with the performance, another key point and something that will be very important in this analysis.

My Criteria

Alright, following that little bit of analysis, I can now set what I feel is the appropriate criteria for determining a worthy Heisman Trophy winner. My goal is to reward the player who, above all else, will be THE player we remember when looking back at this season.

• Must play for a winner. You can't be the most outstanding player if you aren't producing in the one category that matters. In this case, I will classify that as a Top 25 team with at least 9 wins. While that requirement is a little lax, I can allow it so that we aren't eliminating any great players who had brutal schedules and mediocre teams behind them.
• Moments of greatness. The player must have a moment where you look back and say, that was his season in a nutshell. All Heisman winners need to have that play on the big stage of a big game, preferably in front of a national TV audience with a great announcer taking that moment from great to a momentary glimpse into football Valhalla. I want a player who causes an announcer to blurt out "Helllllooooo Heisman!". I want a player who takes over a must-win game against a rival and just refuses to lose that game. I want a player who makes a once-in-a-lifetime, never-before-seen play look like it was child's play. I want a player that steps up on the biggest stage and takes over those moments.
• Bonus points for single season records. If a player has a season that has never been seen before in college football, that should matter...a lot.
• Schedule matters. Think of this as an offshoot of the previous moments of greatness requirement. While playing a mediocre schedule may not kill a player's chances, playing a terrible schedule most likely will as it will be hard for that player to make any name for himself playing Southwest Nowhere U on regional coverage on FSN (call this Colt Brennan Corollary).
• Must not choke in the big games. Another corollary of the Moments of Greatness, this one is the exact opposite of that principle. The worst thing one can do when establishing a great season is put up terrible performances in the biggest games of the season. I know I'll get flak for this, but this is THE reason that Peyton Manning lost in 1997. The voters always had Woodson and Manning 1-2 that season (Leaf made a push, but never really threatened). Unfortunately for Peyton, he lost to Florida in a game where he was under pressure all day from the Gators defense, threw two picks (including a pick six) and Tennessee was never really in it. That game hung over his entire season and I say cost him the Heisman.
• Age makes no difference. This is here for one main reason: since 1992, the three worst Heisman screw ups (in my humble opinion) were 1992 (Gino Torretta), 2001 (Eric Crouch), and 2003 (Jason White). The winners had great seasons for championship-level teams, but weren't the most outstanding players that season. So why did they win? Because the runners-up were all sophomores that the old guard refused to vote for. Marshall Faulk, Rex Grossman and Larry Fitzgerald should all have a vote this year if not for silly biases against underclassmen.

Now that my criteria has been set, let's move on to the candidates

The Candidates (in alphabetical order by last name)

• Montee Ball: Wisconsin RB
• 275 carries, 1759 yds, 20 rec, 255 yds, 38 total TD
• Matt Barkley: USC QB
• 3528 yds, 39:7 TD:INT, 69.1% Comp Rate, 28 carries, 14 yds, 2 TD
• Justin Blackmon: Oklahoma St WR
• 113 rec, 1336 yds, 15 tds
• Robert Griffin III: Baylor QB
• 3998 yds, 36:6 TD:INT, 72.4% Comp Rate, 161 carries, 644 yds, 9 TD
• LaMichael James: Oregon RB
• 222 carries, 1646 yds, 17 rec, 210 yds, 18 total TD
• Case Keenum: Houston QB
• 5099 yds, 45:5 TD:INT, 71.7% Comp Rate, 50 carries, 25 yds, 3 TD
• Andrew Luck: Stanford QB
• 3170 yds, 35:9 TD:INT, 70% Comp Rate, 43 carries, 153 yds, 2 TD
• Tyrann Mathieu: LSU CB/PR
• 71 tackles, 1.5 sacks, 5 FF, 2 Int, 2 FR for TD, 2 PR for TD
• Kellen Moore: Boise St QB
• 3507 yds, 41:7 TD:INT, 74.1% Comp Rate, 19 carries, -65 yds, 0 TD
• Trent Richardson: Alabama RB
• 263 carries, 1583 yds, 27 rec, 327 yds, 23 total TD

The Breakdown

First, let’s look at Justin Blackmon, as he’s the only WR on the list. In my opinion, the last WR who should have won it was Larry Fitzgerald, so I will use Fitzgerald’s 2004 season as a benchmark for Justin Blackmon’s season. Larry Fitzgerald put up 1,595 yards and 22 (!) touchdowns that season on 87 catches. That’s right, Larry Fitzgerald averaged over 18 yards a catch and a touchdown every four catches! The season Larry put up in 2004 is the type of season a WR must have to win the Heisman. Unfortunately for Justin, his season is great and worthy of the Biletnikoff, but that’s as far as it will go. Blackmon will not end up in my top five.

Next, let’s compare the running backs. Firstly, James, Ball and Richardson all had similar seasons yardage-wise, with Richardson a little behind on the ground but he made up for it receiving. The only big difference between these three is in reaching the end zone, and that is where Montee puts himself at the front of this amazing stable of runners. Montee Ball is one touchdown away from tying and two away from breaking Barry Sanders’ single season touchdown record from Barry’s own Heisman campaign. This is the single most astounding number you will see from any of the candidates this season. Montee Ball has punched it in more times than 45 FBS programs did this season. 45 division one FBS football programs were unable to score as often as Montee Ball. Now that you’ve wrapped your head around that, let’s agree, Montee Ball is the best of the running backs this season. To decide between Richardson and James, I give the nod to LaMichael as he put up similar numbers as Trent in two less games due to injury and he would be pressuring Bell for top dog status if not for those lost two weeks.

Third, let’s try to compare and rank the quarterbacks. Immediately, we know all five quarterbacks had tremendous win-loss records this season. So, let’s look at the numbers. Looking at the numbers, we see that all five are very similar in touchdown to interception ratios, all are very similar in completion percentage, and all but Keenum are similar in yardage. Straight yardage though presents a skewed picture, so instead let’s look at yards per attempt to see who was making the most of his passes. Here we see that RGIII is first nationally at 10.8 yd/att, followed by Keenum at 9.5, Moore at 8.7, Luck at 8.5 and Barkley well below at 7.9. This stat gives us our first major separating tool for the group. Considering that Moore and RGIII were the only two to face top 20 nationally ranked defenses (Moore faced Georgia and RGIII faced Texas), and both played probably one of their best games of the season against those opponents, I think those two look best for me right now in the quarterbacks category. Now the back three, Keenum put up gaudy numbers from an air raid offense, Barkley did his with loads of NFL talent out wide and Andrew Luck did his with very little help outside of the tight end position. Luck looked the best in his loss, and Barkley and Keenum, well who cares, so I’ll rank Barkley lower because I don’t like USC. So, let’s rank them as follows: RGIII, Moore, Luck, Keenum, Barkley.

Finally, there is Tyrann Mathieu, the cornerback/nickelback/safety/punt returner for LSU. His numbers alone pop out as he is able to make loads of play on a defense that would be too easy to get lost in. He has forced seven turnovers, scored four touchdowns, gotten to the quarterback twice (once with help) and made nearly 6 tackles a game from the secondary. This man has been all over the field this year as the star player for the LSU defense, which is saying something on a defense that could easily replace the Carolina Panthers defense tomorrow and do a better job this weekend.

So we’ve now looked at all the players and now have what I feel are the five best players in the country this year and the Seidman’s Heisman finalists: Montee Ball, LaMichael James, Robert Griffin III, Kellen Moore, and Tyrann Mathieu.

The Finalists Eliminator

Now that I have my final five, the question is how to pick my Heisman winner. This is where I return to my biggest element: the Moments of Greatness. Who of the five stood out to me the most when looking back at this season? Let’s start with each team’s biggest games:

· Montee Ball (B1G Championship) – As any B1G fan will tell you, playing for the Rose Bowl is as big as it gets, so of course, the game that punches the ticket to the Rose Bowl was Wisconsin’s biggest game this season. Montee Ball showed up big time in that game, putting Wisconsin up big early with two first quarter touchdowns and added two second half touchdowns in Wisconsin’s comeback victory. He finished with 144 total yards and four touchdowns.

· LaMichael James (@ Stanford) – Oregon had three games I could choose as the big game (LSU, Stanford, Pac-12 Championship), but after some thought, I went with the game that clinched the berth in the Pac-12 title game as LSU was too early and UCLA was a pushover. In the Stanford game, James was the star of the show, totaling 156 total yards and grabbing three touchdowns in what turned out to be the only victory in three games against real opponents for Oregon in 2011.

· Robert Griffin III (v Oklahoma) – Baylor had a rough patch in the middle of the season and its voice was fading fast. As a result, this game against the then-number five Oklahoma Sooners stands out as the biggest game of the season for the Bears. Following this game, Baylor would beat two in-state rivals and close out a nine win season. In this game, RGIII ended that game with 551 total yards, four touchdowns, and a game-winning touchdown drive that ended with a touchdown pass to Terrance Williams with 8 second left to give Baylor quite possibly its biggest victory as a program EVER. Combined with his great efforts against Texas and TCU, RGIII had a season full of Moments of Greatness.

· Kellen Moore (v Georgia in Georgia Dome) – Boise entered the season with a huge game against Georgia. While Georgia was considered down, it was still a premier SEC opponent for the Broncos to make noise against, and did they ever. Kellen Moore went 28 of 34 for 261 yards and three touchdowns en route to a 35-21 rout of Georgia. In the game, Moore tore apart the number three defense in the nation on the way to a prominent win on national television. That right there is one hell of a Moment of Greatness. Unfortunately for him, his moment came in the opening game and not later. Boise’s only loss of the season came in a game in which he was outshone by Casey Pachall.

· Tyrann Mathieu (SEC Championship v Georgia) – Honey Badger was all over the field at the Georgia Dome, making huge plays in a game which at one point looked like an upset in the making and ended in a laugher thanks in large part to the contributions of Mr. Mathieu. Georgia was up 10-0 late in the first half when Tyrann broke a punt return loose, running it back to make it 10-7 heading into the half, with the momentum squarely in LSU’s corner. Then, on the third play of the second half, Tyrann recovered a fumble, which shortly after led to a LSU lead. Following a three and out on Georgia’s next drive, this is THE Moment of Greatness for this season of college football. With Georgia trapped in a tree, Mathieu climbed that tree, grabbed them by the jugular and put the game away in emphatic fashion with a punt return back to the Georgia 17 that made everybody watching yell, “DID YOU SEE THAT?!?”.

So those are the Moments of Greatness from this year’s finalists. So after setting those out, it sets up my final ballot for this year’s Heisman Trophy as such:

5. Kellen Moore

4. LaMichael James

3. Montee Ball

2. Robert Griffin III

My Heisman Trophy winner
Tyrann Mathieu. If you wanna argue with a defensive back winning this award, too bad. "Honey badger don't care. Honey badger don't give a shit, it just takes what it wants!"

*If you don't understand the honey badger quotes, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg
You are welcome!