Heisman and All Americans

The last entry I wrote about some of college football's awards being handed out. While these are obviously achievements for those players to be proud of, the grandest of all trophies has been handed out since then. The winner of the 2004 Heisman Trophy award is USC's Matt Leinart. This is who I predicted to win the trophy. Although USC did win (or should I say split) the national championship last year. Leinart by no means has the same team this year as last. He lost his top 2 receivers Kerry Colbert, who made the amazing one handed catch against Michigan in the Rose Bowl last year, and Mike Williams. The latter doesn't get nearly as much press as his departure should. It seems that everyone forgets that Leinart not only lost his number one receiver in the form of Williams but arguably the best receiver in college football last year. Add onto this the fact that Steve Smith was hurt the beginning of the seaon, and Leinart was winning games and putting up huge stats with a number four receiver as his go to target. Just when things are sounding pretty amazing, there are two more important facts that need to be considered. First, he lost 4 of his 5 starting lineman from last year. Second, its not like USC came out of no where. The were a marked team on everyone's schedule from week one. People were gunning to beat Leinart, but beat Leinart they could not. I think the award was well deserved.

The runner up (in total points, not the number of first place votes) was Adrian Peterson. This was the highest a freshman has ever finished. He is the frontrunner for the award next year without a doubt.

Lastly, more hardware was handed out this week besides just the Heisman. College football named its All Americans this week. USC lead the way with 4 (Leinart, Bush, Grootegoed, and Cody). The only other team with 4 All Americans was none other than everyone's favorite University of Michigan Wolverines (Edwards, Jackson, Baas, and Shazor).

To read more about the All American selections, check out the link below from ESPN.com:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=1945424

College Football's Award Night

Some of college football’s end of the year awards were passed out last night. One thing I always wonder about regarding this ceremony is how someone can be the player of the year as a quarterback, but not even win the award for the quarterback of the year. Such was the case last night. USC’s Matt Leinart won the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award last night, but he was beaten out by OU’s Jason White for the Maxwell Award as college football’s best all around player and the Davey O’Brien Award as the quarterback of the year. Anyways, I’m sure that neither of these men will care too much about the awards they won tonight come Saturday December 10, 2004. On that night, these two are some of the finalists for the Heisman Trophy. The other three finalists are Adrian Peterson (RB, OU), Reggie Bush (RB, USC), and Alex Smith (QB, Utah).

As always, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the Heisman. Carson Palmer voted for a freshman WR from USC simply because he didn’t want to vote for any of Leinart or Bush’s competition. There are rumors that, as always, Peterson stands no chance simply because he is a freshman. Also, Jason White is attempting to win his second straight Heisman. The only other man to ever win two of these awards was Archie Griffin. If White does win it, it will continue the streak of players that win the Heisman but are terrible in the NFL. Many ESPN commentators are predicting that White will never get a snap in an NFL game. In fact, of the last 15 Heisman winners, only 3 have ever made it to a single NFL Pro Bowl. Maybe White’s competition are hoping they don’t win it.

Regardless of who wins, the real player of the year will be decided on January 4th when OU and USC face off for the national championship in the FedEx Orange Bowl. It is pretty crazy to think that 4 of the 5 Heisman finalists will be playing in that game.

One final note regarding the awards is that as predicted, UM’s Braylon Edwards won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s best receiver. This is kind of ironic because it is likely that he won’t be the first WR selected in the NFL draft. Instead, that honor will go to former USC WR Mike Williams.

To review the full list of Thursday night’s winners, check out the following article from ESPN.com:

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/awards04/news/story?id=1941886

Freshmen Impact

I wrote in my article about Braylon Edwards that he is one of the main reasons that our team has been able to maintain such a high level of play this year despite losing many significant offensive starters. This is definately true, but somehow I forgot to mention the outstanding play of this years true freshmen.

In the first game when Henne started, many UM fans were rather reluctant to see a true freshman playing. As is somewhat to be expected, Henne started the season shaky. This can be attributed to the faster pace of the college game but also some nerves playing such a high level of football as someone who just got out of high school. I don't want everyone to think that I am some soothsayer, but coming from the Pittsburgh area, I do read in the papers all summer about the recruits UM has gotten from PA. For example, I said all freshman year that Breaston would be amazing, and while my prediction came a year too early, well... we all know what he did next year. Henne certainly lived up to expectations this year. He has showed good decision making and is truly a clutch player.

Then there is the amazing performance of Mike Hart. As a freshman, he came in and totally filled the void left by last year's departing Doak Walker award winner, Chris Perry. Hart had very comparable stats to OU's Adrian Peterson, who is now at the center of the Heisman talks. Even though Hart gets less recognition than Peterson, I believe he had a more impressive season. He didn't have a returning Heisman winner at quarterback. He didn't just get all his runs on one or two long runs in the second half. Hart was good for a consistent 4 to 5 carries every time. I think this is more impressive because that is the kind of stuff that wears down the defense and opens up the pass.

With these two coming back next year along with Avant and hopefully a healthy Breaston, our offense should be a force. Not to mention the fact that we hired the 3rd best high school tail back in the nation, Kevin Grady.

To read more about the impact of these two freshmen, check out the below link:

http://www.mgoblue.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=16418

Bittersweet Ending

Today is by far the most bittersweet football game I have ever watched. The Wolverines got beat up on today by arch rival OSU. As was the case in the Michigan State game, we were unable to control a running quarterback. I think that this was largely in part because we did not break down and make tackles. But unlike many UM football fans, I don't want to just blame the coaches for this. I think that as paid professionals, they tried everyting they could to contain Smith. To his credit, he played his best game of the season.

Unfortunatley, my worries from the last entry all came true. We got down early, which hurt us, but as predicted, we are a second half team. If we wouldn't have had some mistakes at the end of the game, I think we would have pulled it off.

Either way, the outcome doesn't really affect much. We still are Big Ten champions (although it would have been better to have the title outright), and we still get to go the Rose Bowl for the second straight year, which no team has done in the past couple years since Wisconsin did it in the late 1990's.

As of right now, its looking like the Wolverines will play Cal in the Rose Bowl, but nothing is certain with the top of the BCS being so crowded.

To read more about the loss to OSU, check out the link below.

http://www.mgoblue.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=16320

Braylon Edwards

One of the reasons that Michigan is having a great season despite major loses on the offensive side of the ball, most notably Nivarre and Perry, is Braylon Edwards' oustanding play thus far this year. This was particularly evident at the end of the game versus Michigan State when he took over the game in the fourth quarter making spectacular acrobatic catches on fade routes. In the game, he had 11 catches for 189 yards and 3 touchdowns.

As a result of this performance in particular and his solid play all year long, Braylon has recently been nominated for many prestigious end of the year awards. He won the Big Ten offensive player of the week award following the state game. He is named one of the 12 semifinalists for the Maxwell Award (player of the year), and one of the 3 finalists for the Biletnikoff Award (top receiver of the year).

While I am sure that Braylon is pretty proud of all these awards, he is probably most happy that his draft status has drastically improved since last year.

To check out some articles about his awards, follow the link below.

http://www.mgoblue.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=16278

First Entry for the Football Fan Club

This is my first posting, and right now, things are pretty shaky. Our team has decided to to Michigan Extrracirricular activities, and thus, I'm gonna talk about football. Yesterday, the Steelers had another dominating performance over the Browns; however, of course we couldn't get the game here because of the Lions game. That was awesome. Nothing beats watching the Lions play the Jags (minus Leftwich). Anyways, I heard there was a huge fight before the game, which makes sense given the history between the 2 teams.

On Saturday, UM beat NW, but the big news of the day was that Wisconsin lost to MSU opening the door for us to go to the Rose Bowl. While we are a much better team than OSU, it will be a good game because it is at the horseshoe. Also, we are a rather inexperienced team and a second half team. Both of these characteristics worry me because I think that if we get down early and the crowd gets into the game, it could be tough to come back in the second half.

Thats all for now in football land, but if you want to check out some other things going on here at the University of Michigan, check out the like below. It talks about crew, being an RA, maize rage, and partying, all of which are just some more examples of extracurriculars here at Michigan students use to fill time in between studying.

http://michiganactivities.blogspot.com/

For more on the Michigan win over Northwester, check out the link below from mgoblue.

http://www.mgoblue.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=16226

Test

Dan Schuster'

I am a student at the University of Michigan.

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Dan Schuster, danieljs@umich.edu

The OC