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[Supermercado]

Might as well start this forum off right. And what better way than with the Heisman winner? As the title says, it's Leinart.

[Catfish]

I can think of a better way.  BY GIVING THE TROPHY TO SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY DESERVED IT!

[Supermercado]

Right. Leinart was my 4th or 5th vote. I think it should have gone to Reggie Bush, who sadly finished dead last, or Jason White, just to have a second two-time winner. I'd have been okay with either of them winning it. I'm not so sure that Leinart was the most outstanding player this year.

[Catfish]

100% agreed.  My ballot was Peterson, Smith, White, Bush, Benson (but since Benson didn't make the cut, he was substituted for Leinart).  He wasn't even the best player on his position OR team, let alone best in the country.

[Supermercado]

Benson got the shaft. How does a guy win the Doak Walker award for best RB and get passed over by two more RBs for the Heisman finalists? That's messed up.

[Catfish]

East Coast Bias?  Oh wait, that doesn't work in this case...

[Supermercado]

Ya, it's West Coast bias this year. That and sympathy votes for #1.

[Catfish]

Oh God, don't even get me started on the true top 5 for the year... but since you have...

1. Auburn
2. Oklahoma
3. USC
4. Utah
5. Texas

Cal had a chance to prove something to me and they did against Southern Mississippi.  Good teams play well with everything on the line and only two teams (neither of which were in the Pac-10) did that this year.

The country's #4 team (BCS or wtfe) doesn't play a C-USA 6-4 team (all due respect to Southern Miss, especially since I have a dynasty w/them in NCAA 2005) close until under 6 min in the fourth.  Additionally, rivalry or not, a team due a spot in the title game doesn't play a 6-4 national no-name this year that poorly (especially since a badly-blown-dead fumble would have rendered that game a loss [would have changed 20-10 at half to 17-17]).

Good teams beat top teams, even if it's playing bad for a quarter (like Auburn did... they played poor in the third quarter and what happened?  Their offense stepped up to close the door) or just obliterate everyone in their path like OU.

USC got left out last year and sorry for them, but they deserved to get the shaft this year, too.  Make-up votes and preseason polls are crap.

[Supermercado]

Rather than commenting on every point you made, I'll just say this:

Agreed.

[Catfish]

Anyway... here's my BCS lineup of how I would rather have seen the matchups:

Orange: Oklahoma vs. Auburn
Sugar: Virginia Tech vs. Pittsburgh
Fiesta: Utah vs. USC
Rose: Michigan vs. Texas

and for the record... 2 postseason games to watch:

Liberty: Boise St. vs. Louisville
Holiday: Cal vs. Texas Tech

[Supermercado]

Again, I pretty much agree. I think Auburn/Oklahoma would give the best title game. That said, I still think USC/Oklahoma should still be a pretty decent game.

That Liberty Bowl has all the makings of being the best bowl game this year. They've got to be eating that up. IIRC, both Louisville and BSU are top 10 BCS teams. That's a once-in-a-lifetime matchup for a lower-tier bowl such as the Liberty. Someone should step in and make it an honorary BCS bowl this year before the Peach gets added

[Catfish]

Final rankings had Louisville at 9 and BSU at 10... should be a great game (especially since Louisville's only loss was at then-No. 3 Miami), battle of the BCS-almosts.  And yeah, this year's honorary BCS bowl, no question

[Catfish]

HAHEHeahhAHEhAHehROFLROOFOloOLolOLOLolLOOLOL!OLOL!1!11!12


Birdine: Leinart isn't Heisman quality

NORMAN, Okla. -- If Oklahoma defensive end Larry Birdine got a Heisman vote, it wouldn't have gone to Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart.

Birdine made that known Tuesday in a series of statements that showed he wasn't all that impressed with the offense the No. 1 Trojans will bring into the Orange Bowl against the Sooners on Jan. 4.

I feel like they're, I'd say, a one-and-a-half man team," Birdine said. "I want to respect them just because I have to play them, but then I watch them on tape and everything, and I realize that they're an average team."

Birdine repeatedly praised Reggie Bush, the Trojans' All-American all-purpose player who returns punts and lines up as a tailback and wide receiver for Southern Cal, but he had little positive to say about Bush's teammates on offense.

"Besides Reggie Bush, he's a great athlete, he's a fast back, he makes plays or whatever, but nobody else stands out to me," Birdine said. "Matt Leinart, he's the Heisman Trophy winner, but he hasn't been driving them -- or he hasn't been winning games. Up 'til the last four or five games, Reggie Bush has been their difference-maker.

"We feel like if we take Reggie out of the game, we're gonna win."

Birdine said he didn't think Leinart should have won the Heisman Trophy, and he wasn't just cheerleading for teammates Adrian Peterson and Jason White, who finished second and third in the voting.

"If anybody should have won it from USC, it should have been Reggie Bush," Birdine said. "I don't think that he was the best quarterback. [Utah quarterback] Alex Smith, he was better than Matt Leinart. I don't think Matt Leinart should have won."

[LostArtofRolando]

as much as i was rooting for oklahoma and jason white, ...gotta say, it doesnt look like white would have deserved that heisman if he had won it a second time.  kudos to the hesiman voters for actually getting something right (*cough cough, eric crouch anyone?  what a loser and im from nebraska). 
  Ah well, maybe my boy Mack Brown can finally pull the Longhorns together next year and overcome that Oklahoma slump, and pray that we don't play Arkansas (always failing in the clutch).  vince young, dont go nowhere, youve still got 2 years left, so dont let me hear no draft talk...

[Supermercado]

Vince Young can't go anywhere, can he? Wasn't he a true sophomore this year? Or was he a redshirt? I thought he was just in his second year at Texas. If so, he can't leave until next year, anyway. If he left now, it'd be pretty dumb to do so. I don't know that there's a defined position for him in the NFL, anyway. I sort of see him like Eric Crouch. I've not watched a lot of Texas games, but he runs a lot more than he throws for a reason, yes?

[LostArtofRolando]

true, which is odd for a texas quarterback... it was almost like watching a nebraska game.  now that nebraska has ditched the fulltime option and switched to the west coast offense, i almost thought bout rooting for em (i dont care how effective the option was for them, i hate seeing a team run the same damn play over and over). eh, ill just stick with my 'horns.

[Supermercado]

Yeah, rooting for the Huskers and the Horns probably wouldn't work out too well, anyway. That's like me rooting for Clemson and... Miami, or something.

[Catfish]

Credit to USC for winning, but I think even a HS QB could have made some of those throws against OU... that secondary looked sad for a good bit of the game (though some throws were pretty damn nice... 50% doesn't really impress me a ton, lol)... Just have to take my cheapshots

[LostArtofRolando]

ha... true. ou's defense was not gettin the job done at all... if we wanted a team with no defense in there to rack up the scoreboard against usc, we could have thrown in texas tech.  sonny cumbie would have made it a nice 100 point game between both teams haha.

[Catfish]

lol, this is true... funny though, using the circular logic argument, TT spanked Cal by 14 (thanks to some eventual closing of the gap... [sounds like the Auburn/VT game, hmm]) and Texas abused TT, so by that measure, Texas should have whooped the hell out of Cal by around 50 if those two had played... lol

[LostArtofRolando]

haha, but texas tech playing texas is one of those rivalries (all the texas teams are rivals. well except for baylor, who sucks consistently).  well just about anybody texas plays on a normal basis is considered a rival (tech, a&m, ou, arkansas, etc). tech cant stop anybody, but they light em up, kinda like the phoenix suns are doin in the nba right now.  they play no defense, so they have the highest point average per game as well as the highest points scored against per game.  or for that matter, look to the kansas city chiefs of last year.  Amazing offense, but with no defense, they couldnt stop the big teams.  And in the off season, what did they do for trades, signs, and draft picks?  went even heavier on offense... that came back to bite em in the ass this year as the offense couldnt kick it in, and the defense sucked just as bad as ever.  sigh.