Walking between the raindrops

There's a verrrrry fine line between being out of the loop and turning a blind eye, and which side of that line you think USC falls on pretty much depends on your allegiances. If you're a USC fan, players are just getting away with what they can; everything internally is on the up-and-up. If you're not a USC fan, it's become more and more clear that Pete Carroll and the rest of the administration are ignoring the extra benefits being bestowed upon almost every star player.

From Matt Leinart to Dwayne Jarrett to Reggie Bush to Joe McKnight (who has been seen on several occasions driving a Land Rover registered to an area businessman), USC has been walking between the raindrops when it comes to NCAA investigations. One guy donates money to a charity to cover the damage, the next guy won't talk, the next guy changes his story as soon as the facts comes out, etc.

A year ago, I probably would have said that all the talk about USC was overblown; each individual case could be brushed aside as a minor issue. The Leinart-Jarrett thing (sharing a high-end apartment in L.A.) didn't amount to much, and even if Bush was involved with an agent or marketing firm, it was hard to know whether or not the school was involved or had any knowledge of it. But when Yahoo started digging and found out that agents were regularly inside the USC practice facility and locker room and that running backs coach Todd McNair was aware of Bush's connections prior to the 2005 national title game, that raised the ante. And when basketball coach Tim Floyd resigned after allegedly making a cash payment to O.J. Mayo's handlers, that did nothing to ease concerns about the culture at USC.

I very rarely call out a coach for off-the-field problems among players -- it's completely unrealistic to expect one guy to monitor 85 teenagers at all times -- but when we're talking about a pattern of several similar incidents with players living well above their means, it makes it a lot harder to believe that those incidents are just a string of random events that evaded detection. Did Pete Carroll know? Your guess is as good as mine. But it seems increasingly likely that he just ignored everything going on around him because he didn't WANT to know.

When you've got agents circling your practices like vultures, something bad eventually will happen. When a star running back is seen milling around in front of the practice facility while the four-ways are flashing on the Land Rover he couldn't possibly afford, that's not something you just overlook. Carroll's not an idiot; he understands extra benefits.

Bill Plaschke at the Los Angeles Times had an excellent column the other day, with a headline that pretty much says it all: "Trojans are playing with fire." He basically says exactly what I've been trying to say, except he does it with better metaphors:

More smoke here, strange smoke, scary smoke, stupid smoke, adding to a cloud that ensures the NCAA will keep looking for that illegal burn. ...

It's all knucklehead stuff, embarrassing stuff, but it does make one thing official. The USC football program now leads the nation in recklessness.

Heisman Trophy winner's family home? No idea. Star receiver's rent? What? Star running back's car? Who?

C'mon now. It's one thing to evade those gumshoes at the NCAA, it's another thing to insult them.

Yes, it's possible that the businessman who owns the aforementioned Land Rover, Scott Schenter, is telling the truth about letting a "longtime family friend" get a loan in his name, but it seems just a tad suspicious for someone who claims to be an entrepreneur to indirectly associate himself with Joe McKnight by buying a vehicle for his girlfriend -- and I'm not even mentioning the remarkable coincidence that he owns domain names www.4joemcknight.com and www.uscmarketing.com (which we're supposed to believe stands for "U.S.-China marketing" despite the fact that almost all the other domain names he owns are related to Los Angeles-area sports). Whether there's anything inappropriate going on or not, any intelligent person would raise an eyebrow at that series of events.

The unfortunate thing is that just like every other investigation, this one will assuredly end with nothing being done. McKnight will turn pro immediately after the Emerald Bowl, USC will deny knowledge of any wrongdoing and the NCAA will be powerless to do much of anything. Oklahoma and Alabama have received fairly severe punishment in the past few years for self-reporting academic and work-related violations, but USC has realized that as long as everyone denies everything, the NCAA's options are limited. We're not talking about the FBI.

The only problem with that philosophy is that if someone ever does come out and talk -- which is what happened in the O.J. Mayo case -- and the NCAA discovers that USC was knowingly covering up (or at least ignoring) a variety of violations, the punishment will be extreme. No school will ever again receive the death penalty after what happened at SMU, but just about everything else would be in play. Forfeitures? Oh yeah. Loss of a national title (or two)? If Reggie Bush was ineligible, absolutely.

And the most damaging punishment: Pete Carroll would be gone immediately. A boatload of wins and national titles are all well and good, but not at the expense of destroying a program (see Steve Fisher, Ed Martin, the Fab Five and Michigan basketball). Coaches who oversee dirty programs don't make it through the cleaning process, regardless of how involved they were. And while I don't have anywhere near the hatred for Carroll that some people do, he's either overwhelmingly naive or he's skirting the rules, and neither one of those is good enough when you're in charge of a controversial program like USC.

As long as questionable perks like cars, condos and houses keep turning up in association with Trojan athletes, the NCAA won't be going away. And as long as their investigators are snooping around, all it takes is one disgruntled person with some evidence -- like Lloyd Lake, for example -- to destroy everything.

Will that happen? Probably not. I'm sure I'll look back on this post in a year or so and think, "I guess nothing ever came of that Joe McKnight investigation," which is pretty much the same thing that comes to mind when I look at all the allegations in the Reggie Bush case. I suppose it's also possible that I'll look back at all this as the beginning of the end of the USC dynasty. But it seems that at USC, everything conveniently fades away ... or at least fades into some NCAA compliance folder, never to be seen again.

I don't know much about Pete Carroll, but I know that his legacy as USC's coach rests in that folder -- and it's getting bigger every season.

An epic defensive battle ... sort of

If you didn't like yesterday's post -- if 125-point, double-overtime thrillers aren't your thing -- I've got something that might be a little more up your alley.

Despite its name, the 1950 Snow Bowl wasn't actually a bowl -- it was the annual Michigan-Ohio State season finale -- but it has a name for a reason. This was before the days of easily accessible snow plows and huge stadium crews, so when a blizzard descended on Columbus, there wasn't a whole lot that could be done.

The results were as ridiculous as you'd imagine: There were 45 punts, many of those coming on first down just to try to avoid a turnover (yes, you read that correctly). Michigan did not achieve a first down or complete a pass, which is made more remarkable by the fact that Michigan won 9-3. The points came on an Ohio State field goal (a hell of a kick given the conditions), a safety and a touchdown off a blocked punt.

Thanks to the wondrous interwebs and the glory of Youtube, highlights are available for your viewing pleasure:

Crappy bowl games aren't always crappy

There are way too many bowl games. This is not debatable -- schools like Marshall and Wyoming that finish 6-6 in mediocre conferences should not be playing in the postseason.

But sometimes, you luck into an unbelievable game that makes you glad for that little bit of extra college football. Fresno State and Wyoming played a fantastic game Saturday night in New Mexico to open the season's bowl schedule: Wyoming rallied from 11 points down to tie the score with a field goal in the final minute of regulation, stuffed Fresno State (and Ryan Mathews, the nation's leading rusher) four times from the 1-yard line in overtime and then watched their kicker shank the potential game-winning field goal. But freshman quarterback Austyn Carta-Samuels made a fantastic play in double overtime -- escaping the pocket and threading the needle to David Leonard on third down for a 13-yard touchdown that proved to be the game-winner -- and Wyoming held on for a stunning win to conclude Dave Christensen's first year as head coach. Not a bad game, right?

It paled in comparison, though, to a seemingly crappy bowl game that I still consider one of the best college football games I've ever seen: the 2001 GMAC Bowl between East Carolina and Marshall.

I originally planned to write a little bit about some of the mind-boggling stats and give somewhat of a play-by-play to explain how ridiculous the game was as a whole, but I just can't do it justice (here's a link if you want more info). All I'll say is that East Carolina led 38-8 at halftime, at which point Marshall began an incredible comeback that led to one of the most entertaining finishes ever.

Kansas finds a pretty good replacement

My first-ever post on this blog (after the introductory one, anyway) was very column-ish and argued against the institution of a "Rooney Rule" in college football. My belief is that schools should be able to interview and hire whoever they want; if a black candidate is qualified and deserving of consideration, he'll get a shot. No school is going to bypass a potential head coach who could generate a lot of wins and, by proxy, money. This isn't 1952.

Kansas was nice enough to prove my point last week, reaching waaaaay to the northeast and hiring Turner Gill from Buffalo. My first thought: Great hire. The guy is young, has run a successful pro-style offense and just turned Buffalo from a doormat's doormat into a MAC contender. My second thought: Why am I calling a guy with a 20-30 career record at a MAC school a great hire? Considering how decent Buffalo has been the past couple years, I was surprised that Gill's record wasn't at least close to .500. Was I overestimating his success?

The short answer: no. The long answer: no, definitely not (is that long enough to be a long answer? No? Oh well). Here's a number that should give you an idea of just how ridiculously terrible Buffalo was before Gill's arrival: 9-69. That was Buffalo's record from 1999, when the school joined Division I-A, until Gill took over. At no point in that time did the Bulls beat a team with a winning record. Buffalo was arguably the worst program in the country for close to a decade.

In Gill's first year, Buffalo set a school record with 220 points scored despite finishing 2-10. The next year, the Bulls went 5-7 ... and Gill was named MAC Coach of the Year. Read that sentence again. Going 5-7 at Buffalo in 2007 was considered the best coaching job in the conference. The next year, Buffalo went 8-6 -- winning almost as many games as they had in their first seven years combined in I-A -- and beat undefeated Ball State to win the MAC championship and earn a berth in the International Bowl.

The fact that Buffalo's 5-7 record this past season was a disappointment is less of an indictment of Gill's coaching as it is a testament to how far he brought the Bulls in a relatively short period of time. He might not be Brian Kelly, but he's a very good offensive coach and led a three-year turnaround at Buffalo that was almost as impressive as Kelly's at Central Michigan.

As for Gill's offensive acumen, you might notice a trend in Buffalo's national ranking in total offense during his tenure (the Bulls were 112th the year before he arrived):

2006: 109th
2007: 89th
2008: 54th
2009: 43th

He also turned Drew Willy into the school's all-time leading passer (and holder of every meaningful passing record) and James Starks into the school's all-time leading rusher at the same time. To say he pumped life into the Buffalo football program would be an understatement, and if it was possible to find a coach with as impressive of an offensive background as Mark Mangino (who developed Jason White and Josh Heupel during Oklahoma's resurgence), Kansas did it. And it seems safe to say that Gill is a more likable guy who doesn't verbally abuse everyone around him, which should help in recruiting even if the 17-year-old kids are too young to remember him as the awesome QB at Nebraska.

Carl Torbush, the man Gill hired away from Mississippi State to be his defensive coordinator (and who also was head coach at North Carolina and Louisiana Tech and defensive coordinator at Ole Miss, Alabama and Texas A&M), had this to say:

“Anybody who’s ever been around him, there’s no fake about him,” Torbush said. “He’s the type of man I want to be around each day of my life.”

There probably weren't a lot of comparable comments made about Mangino the past few years.

It also says something about his status within the college football world that despite a relatively short career, Gill was able to reach out and quickly bring in Torbush and offensive coordinator Chuck Long, the former Oklahoma O-coordinator who just a few years ago was recognized as one of the hot young assistants in the sport before struggling as head coach at San Diego State. I've held a long-standing belief that a coach's most important decision is who he hires as coordinators, and Gill did pretty well for himself in that regard.

I really don't know if Gill will be able to improve on Mangino's success at Kansas -- it's easier to go from bad to good than it is to go from good to elite -- but I feel comfortable saying that as long as he sticks around, the Jayhawks will never again be as irrelevant as they were for the 20 years pre-Mangino.

The Big Eleven wants one more

So the Big Ten wants to expand. You already know this, and the reasons are obvious:

1. Conference championship games generate a nice chunk of revenue.
2. The conference is tired of being irrelevant for the last two weeks of the regular season.

I'm somewhat neutral on the idea because of the potential scheduling issues -- I think moving the entire conference schedule forward one week would be just as beneficial -- but it sounds like the outspoken support from Joe Paterno, Barry Alvarez and Ohio State President Gordon Gee has finally persuaded Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney to put the process in motion.

Let's cut to the chase: Notre Dame isn't coming. Yes, there are rivalries in place with Michigan, Michigan State and Purdue, and it's true that the Big Ten's revenue-sharing program distributed about $22 million to each school last season (this comes from the ABC/ESPN contract, the Big Ten Network and the redistribution of bowl payouts). But Notre Dame's contract with NBC runs through 2015 at a reported $15 million a year, and the people who say NBC is desperate to get out of that deal because of ND's recent struggles are smoking crack: NBC just extended the contract and increased the payout last year, despite record-low ratings. Notre Dame's value has nowhere to go but up. And rather than having to split bowl money 12 ways (as the Big Ten does with 11 teams and the conference office), ND gets everything to itself, just as it does with its payout from the neutral-site games scheduled in the near future at Yankee Stadium, Cowboys Stadium, the Meadowlands and the Superdome.

Notre Dame isn't in the overwhelmingly advantageous financial position some people assume, but it's certainly doing as well as -- or better than -- almost everyone else. Joining the Big Ten would be of little to no benefit financially, and there are so many benefits of being an independent -- being able to market their own logo and apparel, being able to schedule games wherever money can be made, having regular rivalries with schools such as Navy, Boston College and USC -- that there's no reason to think ND would be interested in joining any football conference. That doesn't mean the Big Ten won't make an offer -- Notre Dame will probably always be the first choice -- but I'll be stunned if ND seriously considers the possibility.

So let's move on. There's been a lot of information flying around about conference requirements and bylaws, but this info comes from ESPN's Adam Rittenberg:

Contrary to popular belief, a candidate doesn't need to be a member of the Association of American Universities or be located within the Big Ten footprint or in a bordering state. Though the schools must fit what the Big Ten looks for, "there’s no prescription that you have to have 30,000 undergrads or you have to be a major research institution," a source tells me.

If a school is attractive enough, one or two factors could be overlooked. But Delaney has made it clear that the conference isn't expanding just to get expand -- the goal is to legitimately strengthen a number of areas -- so for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the only serious candidates are ones that are reasonably well-respected academically and bring competitive football and basketball to the table (the Big Ten is essentially a mid-major in baseball and does not have an organized hockey conference). Crimson Quarry explains this better than I could:

Expansion is not something that the Big Ten undertakes lightly. Penn State joined in 1990. Michigan State joined in 1950. Before that, the last new members to join were Indiana and Iowa in 1899. The University of Chicago is the only school to leave the Big Ten permanently (per Wikipedia, Michigan left the conference from 1907-1916, but was a charter member when the conference was formed in 1896). All current and former members of the Big Ten are major research institutions ranked in the top 100 by US News & World Report and are members of the Association of American Universities. The Big Ten cares about its brand, academically and athletically.

In other words, you can throw out suggestions like Cincinnati, West Virginia and Kentucky right off the bat. The chosen school might not have to be elite academically, but it can't be University of Phoenix either. On top of that, none of those schools brings in a major TV market. There'd be no real benefit outside of one consistently good athletic program at each school.

An "outside the box" candidate that's been mentioned several times recently is Texas, which would be great for the Big Ten but is probably even less realistic than Notre Dame. It's easy to see the appeal -- Texas is a national power in football, basketball and baseball and would add a huge market while expanding the Big Ten's reach into the Southwest -- but the thing people keep forgetting is that whatever teams gets invited has to actually want to join. Texas would gain nothing by going from the Big 12 to the Big Ten (baseball would actually suffer significantly) and would lose rivalries with Oklahoma and Texas A&M as well as a ton of history in the Southwest Conference/Big 12. Travel costs would be a bitch, and the athletic department would probably lose a significant chunk of money (at least in the near future) because the Big 12's revenue-sharing program is far less democratic than the Big Ten's. Chances of happening: 0.001 percent.

Nebraska has been brought up for similar reasons but is really just a slightly less desirable version of Texas; only the football program would be an exciting addition. And while they might be more willing to jump than Texas, they'd still be giving up rivalries with Colorado and Missouri and have no meaningful connections with anyone in the Big Ten. I don't think there'd be a lot of motivation for either side.

And while we're in the Big 12, I think we can also eliminate Iowa State. The academics are mediocre and both major sports are terrible; you don't add Iowa State just to put a conference championship game on the field when it means weakening everything and giving $22 million in revenue to a school that wouldn't even approach that in value.

The list of serious candidates that would be legitimately interested in joining the Big Ten is a short one: Pitt, Syracuse, Rutgers and Missouri.

Brian at Mgoblog put together a handy-dandy chart that breaks down each team's strengths and weaknesses, and while I don't agree with every individual rating, the overall conclusion seems accurate: The two most likely candidates -- by far -- are Pitt and Missouri.

The problem with Rutgers and Syracuse is pretty much purely athletic. While Syracuse would be great for basketball, the football team hasn't been relevant nationally since Donovan McNabb left a decade ago, and Rutgers had been a black hole in both sports until Greg Schiano came along and made the football team decent. Both schools are very good academically and would expand the conference's footprint into the New York area, but I doubt that'll be enough to add another version of Northwestern (Rutgers) or a slightly better version of Indiana (Syracuse). It's also unclear if Syracuse would even want to join: Jim Boeheim apparently is to the Big East what Gary Danielson is to the SEC, and I imagine Boeheim has more pull in the athletic department than just about anyone else.

Missouri, on the other hand, is much more interesting. The football and basketball programs are both very good -- not elite, but good -- and while the school isn't great, it'd be about on par with Michigan State, Iowa, etc. It also brings a major TV market (St. Louis) into play and sets up a natural rivalry with Illinois that's already being played as a nonconference game. In other words, there's no single aspect that makes Missouri a slam-dunk pick, but there are also no real weaknesses. I think Missouri will receive strong consideration; the only question is whether they'd be interested in moving, which apparently depends on who you ask.

Another thing that could get in the way: Pitt. I didn't realize it until I had looked at all the relevant information, but man, I can't see any team -- other than Notre Dame, obviously -- being a more perfect fit. Pitt has very good football (both currently and historically), very good basketball, good academics (the school is ranked 56th nationally by US News & World), an endowment of $2.3 billion (which would top everyone in the Big Ten other than Michigan, Northwestern and Minnesota) and a major TV market, although Penn State already brings in a good chunk of Pennsylvania. Oh, and speaking of Penn State, renewing a once-great rivalry between two consistently excellent football teams would do nothing but help the conference's national prestige. There are a ton of good reasons to add Pitt and no good reasons not to, and if you think they'd rather be in the watered-down Big East than in the Big Ten with Penn State and a big-time national TV deal, you might want to take another look at each conference. If the Big Ten calls, Pitt will listen.

It's hard to know exactly how the decision-making process will work, but I'll be stunned if Pitt and Missouri aren't the top two candidates when all is said and done (assuming Notre Dame still isn't interested). My prediction: Pitt joins the conference for the 2011-2012 academic year and football season.

As I stated at the beginning, my biggest concerns about the whole expansion issue are the divisional alignment and scheduling (which would obviously be related to the alignment). This topic has come up on various blogs and message boards for years, and there are always 1,000 different scenarios laid out to try to balance the two divisions geographically and competitively; I'm not sure it can be done.

The problem is that there are a crapload of traditional rivalries in the Big Ten, and you're pretty much forced to split some of them up. I've heard people suggest that one nondivisional game could be "locked" each year, but that wouldn't work. Each team would then have six locked games (the other five teams in its own division and one nondivisional rival), leaving two open spots and five available teams in the other division. There's just no way to evenly rotate five teams through two spots on a regular basis, so you'd end up with one team having to play the same nondivisional opponents for a three-year period (or a one-year period), and the inevitable byproduct of that arrangement is an uneven number of home/road games against particular opponents during that time. It'd be a mess.

The only realistic scheduling option is having each team play everyone else in its own division and rotating the six nondivisional teams through the three open spots every other year, meaning no team goes more than two years without playing any other team (I should note that if the Big Ten relents and goes to a nine-team conference schedule, a locked nondivisional rivalry game becomes perfectly plausible and maybe even ideal).

The other problem is competition. Similar to Oklahoma and Texas in the Big 12, Michigan and Ohio State absolutely MUST be kept in the same division. If they're split up, you face the likelihood of consistent rematches in the title game that render the regular-season games meaningless. This would be terrible for the rivalry and for the conference as a whole. And assuming that those two are in the same division, you face a dilemma: If you put Penn State in the same division to preserve rivalries, you have one power division with all the best teams. If you don't, there'll be years when Penn State plays neither Ohio State nor Michigan during the regular season. This would be somewhat disappointing, but I could live with it in order to avoid a Big 12 North scenario.

Assuming that the choice for expansion is Pitt and that the conference is more interested in competitive balance than geographical balance -- which seems likely due to the minimal travel required in Big Ten play -- I see the alignment looking something like this:

Division A
Michigan
Ohio State
Michigan State
Purdue
Indiana
Illinois

Division B
Penn State
Pitt
Iowa
Wisconsin
Minnesota
Northwestern

This obviously is less than ideal for rivalries: You have to keep Purdue and Indiana together and you have to keep the Iowa-Wisconsin-Minnesota clump together, so there's no way to get Illinois and Northwestern in the same division. The same is true with Michigan State and Penn State. Unfortunately, some rivalries will have to be sacrificed in favor of better ones (or, in Northwestern's case, the greater good). You could put Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota in a region with Michigan, Ohio State and Michigan State, but that would be ridiculously unbalanced; it'd be Pitt or Penn State in the conference title game every year from now until the end of time.

All things considered, I've never been a huge fan of conference championship games -- I don't like the idea of an 8-4 team winning the title over an 11-1 team, because that just doesn't make sense -- but the Big Ten obviously needs to do something to improve its perception. I mentioned moving the schedule forward a week, but nobody wants to do that (for academic and weather-related reasons). If they can get Pitt, I'm on board. The conference would get a significant upgrade in both major sports and could boast two legitimately strong divisions, which means the conference title game would be something the Big Ten hasn't had in a while: an event that even people outside the conference's footprint would be interested in. Missouri would also be acceptable, as the conference would be slightly better as a whole. No one else (outside of the unrealistic suggestions like Texas and Notre Dame) piques my interest.

Are the Big Ten presidents smart enough to realize that there are two clear levels of candidates? Well ... I don't have a lot of faith based on past decisions, but I guess we'll find out in 12-18 months.

Who deserved the Heisman?

Congratulations to Mark Ingram, the 75th winner of the Heisman Trophy and (remarkably) the first from Alabama.

I would have voted for Ndamukong Suh -- I honestly believe he was the best player in the country -- and most of the Southwest part of the country did vote for Suh, but it wasn't nearly enough. He finished fourth in every other region while Ingram, Toby Gerhart and Colt McCoy were first, second and third in varying orders.

I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a lot of voters out there who just wouldn't put a defensive tackle at the top of their ballots, which is pretty lame. If he's the best player, vote for him. When you don't really watch the games, though (which most voters don't) -- when 95% of what you know comes from Sportscenter highlights or box scores -- all you know is which guy put up the best numbers and which teams won the most games. In my opinion, that's why the Heisman is more of a beauty contest than anything else.

One of the positives of living in the 21st century is that information is more available than ever, and it seems like this should have an effect on voting. I've watched literally dozens of game this year after midnight during the middle of the week on CSTV or ESPNU or ESPN Classic, and a torrent of just about every televised game can be found online. People (specifically voters) can see whatever they want to see, yet this doesn't seem to have had any effect on the Heisman.

Charles Woodson is still the only winner who wasn't an offensive skill-position player, and he probably wouldn't have edged Peyton Manning if not for his effort in Michigan's season-ending victory over Ohio State that completed an undefeated regular season. In that game, Woodson caught a long pass to set up Michigan's first touchdown, returned a punt for a TD (Desmond Howard deja vu) and intercepted a pass in the endzone. He did EVERYTHING in a game EVERYONE was watching; if he had just been a standout corner, he'd have finished a distant second (or lower).

A voter by the name of Bud Poliquin for the Syracuse Post-Standard explains the problem pretty well ...

The Heisman Trophy is pretty much a wonderful thing, but the body of deciders includes too many who are swayed by the packaging and even by the pre-packaging . . . who bow to the hype machines . . . who never seem to consider that the “most outstanding college football player” in all the land might play for a mediocre club whose overall talent load won’t allow that athlete to fully flower.

... and then proves his own point:

Anyway, for the record, my 1-2-3 official ballot read like this: Tebow-Ingram-McCoy.

Amazing. How can you write something so logical and then completely disregard it? How can you watch the SEC title game (maybe he didn't) and put Tebow ahead of Ingram? I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask Bud Poliquin, and the last one will probably be if I can use his ballot next year.

Regardless, since Suh was never going to receive serious consideration from some voters, the question is whether the right running back won. Toby Gerhart had the more impressive numbers, but that's not the only factor (otherwise Case Keenum would be your runaway winner). You have to look at what each player did relative to his opportunities and the defenses he was playing against, and that requires a little more in-depth analysis.

The raw totals:

Player

Gerhart

Ingram

Rush yards	1736	1542
Rush yards/game	144.67	118.62
Carries	311	249
Yards/carry	5.58	6.19
TDs	26	15
Receptions	10	30
Receiving yards	182	322
Receiving TDs	0	3

It's pretty clear, as mentioned above, that Gerhart had an impressive statistical season. But what I noticed right away is that he had a ridiculous 311 carries, 62 more than Ingram despite Ingram playing one extra game (the SEC championship). Everything else being equal, Ingram would have finished with 1,926 yards if he had been given the same number of carries as Gerhart (311 carries * 6.19 yards per carry). The difference between a 6.19 average and a 5.58 average might not seem significant, but we're talking about an additional 400 yards for Ingram.

What about the schedule difficulty? Were SEC defenses significantly tougher than those in the Pac-10? Here are the rush defense rankings for each player's opponents:

Gerhart	Ingram
117	52
82	116
119	104
66	67
60	100
25	55
22	46
18	58
39	44
42	63
27	120
90	80
	13

Surprisingly, the Pac-10 actually had noticeably better rush defenses than the SEC; Gerhart's average opponent had a rush defense ranked 59th, while Ingram's average opponent was 70th. To give you a numerical idea, that means Stanford's opponents allowed about 5 percent fewer rushing yards than Alabama's.

Both played several terrible defensive teams, but Gerhart had a stretch of six games where no opponent was ranked lower than 42nd. This was obviously offset somewhat by Ingram's game against Florida, by far the most difficult defense on either team's schedule (Arizona State was relatively close at 18th in rush defense, but the defenses as a whole -- and the situations -- aren't really comparable). In those six games, Gerhart averaged 31.8 carries (!!!) and 149 yards, or slightly more than his season average. His yards per carry, though, dropped to 4.69. In Ingram's six most difficult games, his average was 154 yards -- significantly more than his season average -- on 24.3 carries, or an average of 6.38 per carry.

In other words, Ingram's numbers were actually dragged down by games against Florida International, North Texas and Chattanooga; he had a total of 29 carries in those three games. He was by far his best against Alabama's toughest opponents, including 113 yards and three touchdowns in the biggest game this year in all of college football.

I was curious what the numbers would have looked like if Ingram had been given Gerhart's carries against Stanford's opponents and vice versa -- I wanted an alternate universe where the two guys swapped roles -- and here's what I came up with:

Player	Gerhart	Ingram
Rush yards	1463	1829
Rush yards/game	112.53	152.42
Carries	249	311
Yards per carry	5.87	5.88
Rush TDs	21	18

That's fairly definitive. Even against slightly tougher defenses, the additional carries Ingram would gain in this hypothetical scenario make the stats a landslide. Ingram would have gained almost 100 yards more than Gerhart did in reality, while Gerhart would have gained about 100 yards less than Ingram did. Yards per game would swing from 26 yards in Gerhart's favor to 40 yards in Ingram's favor. Yards per carry, while closer, would remain in Ingram's favor despite the adjustment for opponents' defenses. Gerhart's only advantage is in touchdowns, but it's a small advantage; it certainly wouldn't be enough to ignore Ingram's edge in every other category.

Simply put, while Gerhart's raw numbers were impressive, Ingram was actually a little better when you remove some of the statistical noise. If you'd have flipped the number of carries, Ingram's stats would have been so superior that the Heisman vote wouldn't have even been close. When you throw in the fact that team success has always had (and should continue to have) some effect on the voting, it's really no contest: Ingram was a huge part of Alabama going 12-0, and while it certainly wasn't Gerhart's fault that Stanford lost four games, it didn't help that he was held 35 yards under his average in those games.

I still think Ndamukong Suh should have won, but if it had to be an offensive player, the choice was clear. The right running back got the trophy.

Notre Dame finally gets it right

In early August of 2002, I was stringing for a paper in west Michigan during my sophomore year at Grand Valley State University. I got a call one afternoon from the sports editor asking if I'd like to cover the school's preseason scrimmage and write a feature on coach Brian Kelly. I couldn't do it; I believe it was scheduled for the same day I was moving to Arizona, which obviously was somewhat of a conflict.

Just over seven years later, Kelly is the head coach at Notre Dame. That is a fucking meteoric rise, and it didn't happen because he's just a lucky guy. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Kelly is one of the best coaches -- if not the best -- in the country.

Let's go through his background one more time:

• He went 118-35-2 at Grand Valley State, including back-to-back national titles in his last two seasons (2002 and 2003) and a 41-3 record in his last three seasons. It's also worth noting that Grand Valley set the NCAA all-division scoring record in 2001 -- when they lost in the title game after QB Curt Anes blew out his knee in the semifinals -- with 58.3 points per game (lol).
• He took over a Central Michigan team that had won a total of 12 games in the previous four seasons and went 4-7, 6-5 and 9-3 in three years, winning a MAC championship in 2006.
• He left for Cincinnati, which had never won the Big East nor been to a BCS bowl game, and went 10-3 in his first year, 11-3 in his second year (when Cincy won the conference and went to the Orange Bowl) and 12-0 this year.

I'd been hoping for close to a month (or however long it had been since we all realized Charlie Weis was done) that the ND administration would somehow overlook Kelly or reject him because of his offense-focused background, and I was optimistic for a while. Bob Stoops? He's obviously very good, but Kelly is a lot more terrifying in the long term. Randy Edsall? Ummm ... sure.

But Jack Swarbrick apparently isn't as much of an idiot as I'd hoped. He said during Kelly's press conference on Friday that Kelly was the first coach he talked to and the only coach he offered the job to, and while there's no way to know if that's true, he'll certainly look smart when Notre Dame is winning BCS games in the near future (which they will be).

I remember reading an interview way back in about 2000, when Kelly was still at Grand Valley and was asked (I think by a writer for the student newspaper) about his Irish-Catholic background and whether, if the opportunity ever came up, he'd be interested in the Notre Dame job. I don't remember the exact wording of his response, but it was pretty clear that it was something he aspired to and would never turn down.

He reiterated that at his introduction Friday:

Kelly wisecracked that he didn't "doodle the ND diagram" at his other jobs, but he hoped he could one day run the Irish and called the job the "culmination" of 19 years of coaching.

Elite head coach with national championships on his resume? Check. Irish-Catholic? Check. Views the Notre Dame job as the pinnacle of coaching? Check. At the end of the day, he was the slam dunk of slam dunks.

Notre Dame fans ought to be thrilled ... but they're not, of course. Brian at The Sporting Blog pulls some of the best responses from ND Nation (and based on my observations from the past two weeks, this is a pretty accurate sample of the consensus opinion):

ND has said no to Gruden Saban and Stoops in the last decade
That's the kind of institution it is.
If and when Kelly is named, the focus should be on how and why we failed with Stoops.

Yeah, it was ND that turned down Nick Saban and Bob Stoops. It obviously had nothing to do with the fact that those guys had no interest in leaving better jobs to go to South Bend.

Gruden who wanted to be here and they f----- it up.
Meyer who wanted to be here and they f----- it up.
Stoops who wanted to be here and they f----- it up.

How fecking tough can it be? I think I should be the next AD. I don't know s--- about college sports, but I love ND, know how to talk to people and can close a sale.

This is a problem with the Notre Dame fan base in general: It's collectively so delusional that it's convinced EVERYONE'S dream is to lead the Irish back to glory and that the only issue involved is money. There's absolutely no grasp of reality, which is that ND has some obvious disadvantages, sky-high expectations and a ton of pressure that really doesn't align with their recent history.

You just hired a truly elite coach who has desperately wanted to coach at Notre Dame for most of his life. Stop complaining. The one concern I've heard that's somewhat valid is that Kelly's lack of experience at the D-I level limits his "network" of potential assistants, but there are two things that will probably render that irrelevant:

1. Kelly calls his own plays, so he doesn't need (and wouldn't want) a high-profile offensive coordinator.
2. It's unclear who Kelly will hire as defensive coordinator, but there's a guy by the name of Chuck Martin who was DC under Kelly at Grand Valley State, then took over as coach when Kelly left and has gone 74-6 with four perfect regular seasons and two national titles in six years.

Martin was asked just a couple days ago about the possibility of being offered a job on Kelly's staff at Notre Dame, and this was his response:

“No, I wouldn’t turn that down,” Martin said. “But I’ve turned down D-coordinator at Central and D-coordinator at Cincinnati. He may be done asking me. ...

"I wouldn’t want to be a D-coordinator (just anywhere), but I am a Chicago Catholic -- if he wasn’t already in South Bend, I’d probably beat him there.’ I grew up and that was my team.”

I never dreamed of a scenario where Grand Valley's coaching staff would be reunited at Notre Dame; I'm not quite sure how to feel about that. I don't think I'll ever be able to root for ND to be a dominant program, but my rooting interests don't have any effect on reality. They will win -- a lot -- and all the Irish fans who are sobbing over the inability to get Bob Stoops will be glad somebody else was in charge and hired Brian Kelly.