Heisman Race wide open

While many fans will forever detest the Bowl Championship Series cartel, at least college football is starting to consistently deliver one exciting race for a premier award.

Yes, we're talking about the Heisman Trophy. And for the second straight year in mid-November, the race for arguably the most sought-after award in sports is up for grabs.

With a vote since 1996, we know filling out this year's ballot will not be easy. It's not like this most years when by this time the Heisman race has all the excitement of a Louisiana-Monroe-Texas game. The average winning margin of the last 20 Heisman winners? A homecoming blowout-like 593 points.

Last year, Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford (remember him?) emerged from a three-way scramble to edge Texas' QB Colt McCoy by 122 points (the fourth closest vote since 1986) while fans in the South stewed that Florida QB Tim Tebow (third, 151 points back) got jobbed out of a second straight Heisman.

And this year, some history looks to be made with the top two players on the nation's top two teams, Tebow and Alabama RB Mark Ingram, dueling it out. Either Tebow joins Ohio State's Archie Griffin as the only players to win multiple Heismans or Ingram becomes Alabama's first Heisman winner.

If Tebow and Ingram somehow both faltered, unheralded Houston QB Case Keenum might just have enough to become the first Heisman winner from a non-BCS conference school since BYU's Ty Detmer in 1990. Then there's McCoy, whose numbers are a bit down but still has skills that make former Heisman winners such as Gino Torretta, Jason White or Eric Crouch look silly by comparison.

And that's the word we always come back to with the Heisman -- silly. People care so much about exactly who wins the annual popularity contest for the sport's version of the best picture Oscar.

We prefer to define the Heisman by who didn't win it (Jim Brown, Dan Marino, John Elway, Steve Young, etc.) than who did (Gary Beban, Andre Ware, self-proclaimed dope addict Rashaan Salaam, Paul Hornung from a 2-8 Notre Dame team).

Is it fair that Michigan's Charles Woodson (a name that lives in infamy in Tennessee) is the only non-QB-running back to win the Heisman since 1950? Seems a lot of positions don't even count to some voters. Or that Notre Dame, USC and Ohio State have combined for 21 Heismans (7 each), easily more than the entire SEC, ACC and Big East combined (16).

And as for NFL success, Heisman-winners are doing about as well as a hot dog vendor at the East Carolina-Memphis game. Carson Palmer, Reggie Bush and Woodson are the only of the last 20 Heisman-winners so much as starting on Sundays. Most analysts don't think Tebow will change that trend with the sore-shouldered Bradford now also a bit of a question mark for the NFL.

Fortunately in the end, the Heisman remains about what a player does on the field in college. And that's where Ingram and Tebow look to settle things in the Crimson Tide-Gators' mega-showdown in the SEC Championship Game Dec. 5 in Atlanta.

A win for Ingram, son of the former NFL receiver by the same name now in prison, would be quite a feat considering he rushed for a respectable but hardly Herculean 728 yards last year (second on the team). A second Heisman for Tebow would be a tribute to his courage after that wicked concussion he suffered in September at Kentucky on top of the many hits he takes as UF's primary (and sometimes only) source of offense.

On the very same Georgia Dome stage vs. undefeated 'Bama last year, Tebow couldn't have come up bigger (14-of-22, 216 yards passing, 3 TDs in rallying UF to a 31-20 win). On top of that, Ingram will need plenty of help vs. the Gators defense (leads the nation in scoring, 10.1 points per game, second in total defense, 232.4 yards per game), which held him to 21 yards in last year's win. So "Saint Tim," as his critics mock him, is still the heavyweight champ -- until somebody strikes a pose over him.