The Hypeman Trophy...Not The Real CollegeFootball MVP

The Hypeman, er, Heisman Trophy winner will be announced this Saturday night. Can somebody wake me up when it is over?

Let me tell you something...there is nothing that will ever convince me that the Hypeman will ever be a legitimate award ever again until the selection committee starts putting players on both sides of the ball and from all positions on the field into contention to win the award.

I remember when Chris Spielman, the Ohio State linebacker who would go on to have a distinguished career with the Detroit Lions and Buffalo Bills, was a senior. All the hype that year, 1986, was about Oklahoma linebacker Brian Bosworth and how Bosworth was going to be All-World. He would cure world hunger, this and that, on and on, ad nauseam. The Boz could do no wrong.

Bosworth, as I remember, was a finalist for the Hypeman. Go figure. Even if he didn't win the “award.”

The reality was that Spielman had more tackles and sacks that season than Bosworth. The Cleveland Plain Dealer published a small but very telling blurb on the comparative stats of the two linebackers just before the Hypeman vote in 1986. Perhaps he should have been in the Hypeman loop, but Spielman wasn’t even on the radar screen.

Spielman may not have had a Hall Of Fame caliber pro career, but he was pretty good by any objective analysis.

Bosworth chunked out of the NFL within three years of his overrated career. He was a Grade A self-promoter and a failure at backing up his own hype if there ever was one.

That was the first time that I felt a non-skill position player should have won the award. Never mind that I thought it should have been Spielman instead, but I digress.

Since then, only one player who hasn't been a QB, WR or RB has won the Hypeman. Go figure that it was Charles Woodson from That School Up North, even though he's gone on to have just as serviceable a pro career as Spielman.

There should have been other non-QBs, WRs, and RBs in the last 20 years that should have rated higher. Orlando Pace should have won the "award" the year before Woodson. I guess being an offensive lineman ain't sexy enough for the Hypeman. That's only one example, but there have been others over the last twenty.

And that is why I say Ohio State’s LB James Laurinaitis deserved consideration this year as opposed to the usual skill position suspects. I’m not saying that the finalists for this year’s “award” aren’t good players or won’t go on to have productive NFL careers. But are they decidedly better than Laurinaitis? That is very debatable?

Don't like Laurinaitis? Why not LSU ‘s DT Glenn Dorsey? Why not That School Up North’s T Jake Long? USC’s T Sam Baker? Illinois’ LB J Leman? I could go on and on...but I'm sure you are all smart enough to get the point.