(This is part one of a two part series looking at PITT’s chances of having both a Heisman Trophy and a Biletnikoff Award winner in the 2015 season. Part II will be posted tomorrow)
There was a topic on the Rival.com pay board the other day talking about the idea that PITT might have both a Heisman Trophy and a Bliletnikoff Award winner on the 2015 team in RB James Conner and WR Tyler Boyd. I chipped in my two cents then realized that this would be a good topic for some off-season football discussion on this blog. So here it is. An interesting thing is that when I responded to the message board topic I had done minimal fact checking but while writing this I delved into both awards and see that I was rather mistaken when it came to my thoughts regarding Boyd and the Biletnikoff Award. At first I thought he had no shot at all but maybe he does… (later article).
We PITT fans love these two valuable and star players but sometimes do tend to look at them through our Blue & Old Gold colored glasses, especially when mentally comparing them to other candidates for prestigious awards. Here is a breakdown of how realistic our chances are to have those two major awards sitting in the PITT clubhouse at the end of the 2015 season. Both players are in consideration for the awards; Conner is on the Heisman list (at 33-1 odds) and Tyler Boyd is among 75 players on the preliminary Biletnikoff ‘watch list’. Let’s take a closer look at Conner and the Heisman first.
THE HEISMAN MEMORIAL TROPHY
Just for background, the Heisman Trophy as stated “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. “ The Heisman selection committee is comprised of sports journalists who have been selected from six broad geographical areas covering the US. There was 929 voters last year including one ‘at-large’ vote cast by the American public football fans.
It is usually awarded to offensive players (all but one, DB Charles Woodson) who play on winning teams although every player in college football is actually an eligible candidate…. sure! There is hope for Chris Blewitt then. Here are the winners in ‘modern times’. I started at 1975 because that was right before The Hawk won it for the home team. Yea Us!! It is a a long list but the names are linked so it it nice to be able to see what each winner actually did. Plus in the linked info you can see the runner-ups and their voting point totals.
We PITT fans have a love/hate relationship with this award because we have had one winner, senior RB Tony Dorsett, who ran away (literally) with the voting in our national championship season of 1976. That’s the love part and thus he became legend in PITT football history. In the modern days I can’t think of any winner who was on a team that was even close to a .500 winning record as they always come from a Top Ten team at least. Since the year 2000 there have been 14 Heisman winners and 12 have been on Top 5 teams with the two others on #7 ranked teams. Our PITT program has a huge job ahead of them to even get Conner into a viable position to win the Heisman. The Admin needs to start the “Conner For Heisman”ad campaign as soon as possible to get as much buzz going as we can to get a jump on his competition. The beginning of spring practice would be a very good time to start especially since we just found out our Spring Game will be televised on ESPN3.
But wait! There’s more! Many people, including every PITT fan, felt Dorsett should have won the Heisman in his junior year of 1975 also. That was the second consecutive year in which RB Archie Griffin of Ohio State won the award and Griffin’s statistical output was nowhere near Dorsett’s. Here is the comparison:
| Player | Attempts | Yards | Average YPC | TDs |
| Dorsett | 255 | 1686 | 6.6 | 13 |
| Griffin | 262 | 1450 | 5.5 | 4 |
Of course the fans of California’s Chuck Muncie and USC’s Rick Bell have a right to bitch also as those players ended 2nd and 3rd in the voting while Dorsett came in at 4th, but who gives a crap about those teams? The key here is that Griffin played on an 11-1 team that placed fourth in the final season’s rankings while Dorsett was on a 8-4 team that finished 15th.
The negative feelings we have toward the selection committee continued on and got stronger due to two other questionable choices for the award. In 1981 our great senior LB Hugh Green was by far the most effective, feared and game changing player in college ball yet he didn’t garner enough votes to win the Heisman. South Carolina’s RB George Rodgers placed ahead in a rather close vote. It was obvious that the Committee just couldn’t bring themselves to award the trophy to a defensive player. Here is an excerpt from the 1980 award page: George Rogers of South Carolina and Hugh Green of Pittsburgh waged a furious battle for the Heisman, with Rogers getting 216 first place votes to 179 for Green. Green’s first-place votes and his points total were the highest ever gained by a lineman. Third place finisher Herschel Walker of Georgia had the highest point total ever recorded by a freshman.
What happened was that the South and South-West areas voted heavily for the South Carolina (Rodgers) and Georgia (RB Herschel Walker) candidates.
That wasn’t the worst screw job though. The 2003 Heisman went to Oklahoma’s QB Jason White who squeaked out a win over PITT’s hugely talented WR Larry Fitzgerald. That result was howled about then and is still is being howled about to this day by PITT fans. The local Pittsburgh sportswriters who voted for White instead of hometown Fitzgerald are still reviled by certain factions even today.
Can Conner win this award? I say yes with caveats. He can do it especially if he replicates then betters his 2014 numbers and he plays on a team that gets nine or more wins. With this award it isn’t only the player’s production or even his worth to the team as a whole. The voters throw in the unwritten policy that the player has to help put his team in position for conference and the national championships. Certainly the candidate’s team has to end up in the Top 20 nationally.
But Conner had the name recognition at the end of 2104 by finishing in the Top 10 in TDs (3rd with 26), rushing yards per game (6th with 135.8) and rushing yards total (7th with 1767). IMO he has to meet or better that production to win – maybe not as many TDs but in all other categories. But the real key, assuming he plays lights out again, will be how many wins PITT gets next year.
Of course the fact that the 13 of the last 14 winners have been QBs doesn’t help his cause either.
It’s almost here!!
16 TD’s as opposed to only 4 TD’s. Can’t remember a Heisman winner and certainly a RB who ONLY scored 4 TD’s EVER.
236 more yards for TD on fewer attempts than Griffin.
And a hugely substantial difference in YPC in favor of Dorsett.
This is when I started despising Ohio Fake.
Thx for changing the subject too Reed, tired of schooling ppl.
And became a flunky writer for the Pgh Press and part-time baseball coach.
Harpo or Zeppo ?
Phuck those Buckeyes.
Yes it is and we just happen to have a coaching staff that understands that in this day and age you need to be in (all types of) the media 24/7. Perception is reality.
More like the Bentley.
HTP and The Blather!
What Boeheim did pales in comparison.
But the very best football and basketball programs all cheat in some way. Maybe thats the reason why Pitt has been an epic failure over the past 30 years. At least when we cheated, we had Dorsett and Marino and good times. I think it was worth it.
Need to find a way to push the boundaries.
“We’ve been fortunate,” Dixon said. “You try to do the right things. Still, things can occur, but [following rules] is something that is important to us, it is important to our university. They (the PITT administration) have made it very clear to us they don’t want us to even come near the line, and that was made evident to me from the start and emphasized throughout.”
To which Chas wrote: “Rough translation to that last paragraph: “You did see what happened to that Wannstedt fella, right?”
PITT just hasn’t been a university which will tolerate having the athletic department play even close to the edge when it comes to violating NCAA rules and regulations. Nor will it tolerate sketchy ethical athletic leadership for too long. It has shown that in the past and will hopefully keep that frame of mind when it comes to the present and future also. Wins and losses in BB and FB have not been so important that PITT will cheat, or I’d say even ‘push the boundaries’ to achieve them.
Nordenberg was hard over with this issue and I can’t see Gallagher or the AD who is chosen to assume the position at PITT being any different.
I know some PITT fans want wins no matter how they come about but after being closely involved with PITT fandom over the last ten years I truly believe the vast majority of people associated with PITT athletics, inside the school and the alumni and fans outside who support the teams, want PITT to keep on the straight path and let the teams play out the competitions withing the formal and informal boundaries. It just isn’t so important to win games that PITT will lower those standards.
I also think that the ‘cheating’ we fans allude to during the 70s and 80s is overblown. Yes, we bent rules at that time and boosters got too involved in athletics but PITT has never been on the level of cheating as many other large programs have been.
Not always…..link to heisman.com
BTW .. Pitt is a 1 point underdog today.
Just saw a segment on KDKA featuring Jordan Whitehead appearing in a Central Valley production of the musical “Me and My Girl”. Seems like a really great kid who is enjoying his senior year.
Saw that Emel’s and Upitt’s favorite target, James Robinson, made the All ACC Academic Team along with Cam Wright and Sheldon Jeter.
Also saw this “For the third time in four years under coach Jamie Dixon, Pitt achieved top-10 percent NCAA Academic Performance rankings. Pitt joined Duke and Notre Dame as the only ACC teams to receive the honor during that span.”
It’s got be tough to be Emel and Upitt. You live in another region and your entire identity is tied up in the on-field and on-court success of your football and mens basketball teams. It reminds me of my experiences in West Virgina.
WBB – I assumed he meant cheating because that is what he mentioned. Either way, we did that not too long ago and got a single 10 win season. Was one 10 win year worth all the crap we went though in 2010 & 2011? I don’t think it was.
I look at what Paul Chryst did on that behavioral side of the football program then wonder if, with a extra score here and there and a few more wins, fans would feel the same way about recruiting marginal players.
As we discussed on here many times PITT lost more games by less points than any other team in D1 last season. To me a better X&Os head coach and a better DC would have given us 9-10 wins in ’14, not necessarily more recruited kids who get in trouble.
I really hope Gallagher and whoever the AD is are going to present a strong regarding the positive changes that occurred in the program over the last three years and mandate that to Narduzzi and staff. I also hope they do it early on (maybe it has already taken hold with the suspension that was levied two weeks back) and consistently. This type of behavior stance is so much more effective when it comes from where the rubber meets the road with the HC and staff contact with the players and recruits rather than being ordered down from the higher administration.
I truly believe we can win three or four more games per season games without sinking to a lower level of disciplinary standards, and I think a coach like Narduzzi is one of those coaches who can do it here at PITT.
Here is a good reminder of what can happen when we get a combination of poor leadership and sketchy athletic dealings as mentioned by TX Panther about those 1970-80 years… plus this article is a good look at what can happen when PITT does not do due diligence in the AD selection process.
Above, I was referring to the mid/late 70s as much as I was to the recent past … Dorsett with his > $1000 parking fines, etc
The person I missed was of course was Jabaal Sheard who had that incident on the south Side Yet, ironically he was well known as a high character person, and in fact was nominated for the Walter Payton Man of the Year last year, which is an award for exemplary behavior and service off the field
Schools that cheat win games. Winning makes the school marketable and increases brand value. Winning brings in the donations and fills the seats.
Winning makes the NCAA and everyone MONEY. Therefore, the NCAA turns a blind eye to it. The NCAA tacitly encourages this behavior. Until the corrupt NCAA is disbanded, you’ll see the cheating continue.
Should Pitt get along for the ride? Maybe we sit at the back of the bus. I’ll take that for a nice bowl game that’s not in Birmingham or Detroit.
Jason White…sigh
Sounds like you’re suggesting that Jamie should be Dean of Academics rather than the mens Head Basketball Coach! Certainly we all want our players to do well in their classes and graduate, but I have news for you, the Big Dance selection committee doesn’t factor in GPA’s!!! But maybe since we are not going to the NCAA Basketball Tourney maybe our team can go to the NCAA Science Tournament. :>)
This thinking is similar to universities that hide their respective heads in the sand about minor abuse on campuses. Just because it hasn’t hit the news, doesn’t mean it won’t tomorrow or next week. Public universities are a breeding ground for bad things to happen. Lack of institutional governance pervades institutions.
My point is, let’s not get too cocky about our academic integrity. It only takes one rogue athlete, professor, admissions rep or assistant to screw things up for the masses. We should remain humble, not cocky. Just sayin….
Unfortunately too many follow the philosophy that “the ends justify the means”
Or as the Great WC Fields would say “Never give a sucker an even break” which is the philosophy used on Wall Street that brought on the Housing Collapse.
We live in a very corrupt society. Should institutions of higher learning be any different when huge amounts of money are involved?
I think they should, but most business schools didn’t have a class on business ethics before the economy collapsed.
Unfortunately, punishments levied by the NCAA seem to have no effect on changing bad behavior, and Wall Street is selling more derivatives than ever.
Jason Douglas – hit and run (w/Dan Mason in the car)
Keith Coleman – Assault
Elijah Fields – drug tests and stupidity
Adam Gunn – resisting arrest
Jabal Sheard – assault
Fernando Diaz – D&D
Ray Graham – assault
Devin Street – assault
TJ Porter – DUIs
There were more but I can’t place them now. Then you have all the suspensions, Mike Cruz, Tommie Duhart… I can’t remember more without research but we had a slew of suspensions those years along with the arrests.
All those kids were recruited by DW and were on those winning 2009-10 teams and those arrests were what led to the goat f*ck situations in 2010 -2011. It was bad wbb and I don’t think any PITT fan wants to see that again.
Compare those years with Chryst’s three years and I can remember maybe one instance where PITT players were arrested (KK Smith / Carswell/ Williams drug house) and none who were actually recruited by Chryst himself.
Greed feeds the corruption.
Hell, on the 2010 roster alone we had 22 kids who had been recruited and put on scholarship by DW that had been arrested at some point in their high school and college years. 22 is more than 25% of the 85 scholarship players on the roster. That was horrible, there was zero oversight and that changed after DW was fired.
Again, I say that we don’t have to lessen PITT’s behavioral standards to get winning teams. I think it can be done with good recruiting – still using strict criteria in mind – and good coaching and I think we’ll see this new staff doing just that. Just as I think if Chryst and House had been better on-field coaches we would have had two winning (8-10 wins) seasons in ’13 and ’14. But they weren’t and we lost games with, I think, decent talent.
Further, my point that there were no recruiting issues for any of these teams … thus no threat of sanctions. And if you would put up to a vote of Pitt fans, I’m guessing they would abide with some off-the-field issues if it meant double digit wins … I really believe that
Although I think both players are worthy, chances are slim to none unless we win 9 or 10 games and that will be largely up to the defense.
I think Boyd’s chances are a little better because that award is not as dependent on being a top ten team. But, his chances are hurt, if we don’t throw as much as many teams will.
In any case we are fortunate to have these two All-Stars and to be in the discussion.