Quinn's Supporting Cast Should Not Cost Him the Heisman

Awards in sports are getting dumber and dumber. The more statistics, and hence, the more opportunity for intelligent analysis, the denser some voters become. And the Heisman Trophy has, over the last 20-odd years, become the bastion of the densest.

Despite the fact that nearly every leading player in the country gets to play in a bowl game, results from bowl games aren't taken into consideration. Why not? In many cases, the bowl game represents the toughest level of opposition a Heisman candidate faces all season. The Downtown Athletic Club also refuses to consider giving two Heismans — adding a second award for the best defensive player in the country — or at least joining with organizations that already honor defensive players and announcing the awards at the same ceremony. Up until 1963, a player's defensive ability was taken into account in the Heisman voting; since then, the Heisman has been given to just one defensive player (Michigan defensive back Charles Woodson in 1997) while still maintaining the fiction that the award goes to "The Outstanding College Football Player in the Nation."

For that matter, it's time that college football acknowledged that the age of specialization is here to stay and give equally prestigious awards to players at every position. There are awards for players at every position, but the Heisman is page one news while the winner of the Dick Butkus Award for outstanding college linebacker usually merits, at best, a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the sports section.

Until about 21 years ago, it was understood by seasoned observers that the quarterback for the no. 1 team in the country was seldom a legitimate contender for the best player in the nation, if only because if a team was good enough to be ranked no. 1, it was difficult to accurately assess the quarterback's contribution. Before Florida State's Charlie Ward in 1993, Notre Dame's Angelo Bertelli in 1943 and Johnny Lujack in 1947 were the only quarterbacks for no. 1 teams to win the Heisman. Virtually all the other Heisman winners at quarterback, notably Navy's Roger Staubach (1963), Florida's Steve Spurrier (1966), and Stanford's Jim Plunkett (1970), won their Heisman because of, not in spite of, playing on teams that weren't national championship contenders. Their statistics were thought to be accurate reflections of their own abilities rather than their teammates'.

Thirty-five or 40 years ago, Brady Quinn of Notre Dame (no. 11) would be a clear favorite for the Heisman Trophy. Instead, no. 1 Ohio State's Troy Smith, a fine player but perhaps no better than a dozen others at his position, will probably win it in a landslide. Let's put aside some obvious points: Of course, there isn't a real way of assessing the best player in the nation, and, since in today's game only running backs and quarterbacks get serious consideration, there is no way to pinpoint exactly where statistics stop reflecting individual talent and start reflecting team strength. That doesn't mean, though, that common sense analysis of the available data should be thrown out the window.

Let's start with the raw numbers of the two leading candidates, Smith and Quinn:

Clearly, Quinn has the advantage in total passing yards and touchdowns, though this is unfair to Smith — his team didn't need to pass as often as Quinn's in order to win. A comparison of their quality stats — yards per throw, interception rate, touchdowns to interceptions — shows no clear difference between them, Smith posting the higher yards a throw while Quinn has a lower interception percentage and better touchdown-to-interception rate. Jump ball.

The relevant question, then, should be which passer was most helped by schedule and his supporting talent. Regarding the first point, there's a misconception in the press that Ohio State played a tougher schedule than Notre Dame. They did not. OSU's opponents, not counting their games against the Buckeyes, were 73–59, while Notre Dame's were 75–48. It's true that the Irish played a couple of walkovers in North Carolina and Army, but their top six opponents, based on Sagarin's neutral field power ratings in USA Today, were USC (no. 2), Michigan (3), UCLA (20), Penn State (23), Georgia Tech (35), and Navy (43), while Ohio State's were Michigan (3), Texas (19), Penn State (23), Minnesota (37), Cincinnati (40) and Iowa (46). So the top half of Notre Dame's schedule (a combined 52–16) was tougher than Ohio State's toughest six (47–19).

Let's see how Quinn and Smith fared against their toughest six opponents:

Against slightly tougher opposition, Quinn performed at the same level of effectiveness as Troy Smith. How much, then, of Smith's success was due to his own skill and how much to the talent of his teammates? There's no way of making a precise judgment, but what is obvious is that Smith got far more help Ohio State's running game than Quinn did from Notre Dame's. The Buckeyes averaged 180 yards a game and 4.7 yards a rush, while Notre Dame's running attack was a little less than mediocre, averaging 124 yards a game for a 3.8 average.

What about pass blocking? Here Smith had a substantial boost over Quinn: His offensive line allowed him to be sacked just 13 times, while Quinn's blockers let him go down 30 times.

How about their respective defenses? How were the two quarterbacks helped out in terms of field position and game situations? Here, Smith had the biggest advantage of all: OSU's defense gave up just 273 yards a game and allowed 10.4 points a game, second best in the nation, while ND's rather un-tenacious D gave up 320.5 yards a game with an average of 22.4 points. In only one game all season was Smith really under pressure, against Michigan, and he acquitted himself brilliantly. But the fact is that all season long, Troy Smith never had to play catch up and could pretty much pick and choose the spots he wanted to throw in — and when he wasn't throwing he had a first rate rushing attack to reply on. Brady Quinn had none of these advantages and was pressed in virtually every game not only to run the offense but to be the offense. The primary knock on Quinn is that his team lost to Michigan and USC by a combined total of 46 points, but Quinn doesn't play defense and has nothing to do with how many points the other team scores. He had 508 yards passing and six touchdowns in those two losses.

The uncritical acceptance by so many writers and commentators of Troy Smith's Heisman worthiness reflects an attitude that has become popular in college football over the last couple of decades, namely that "the best player on the best team" — or at least the player on the best team with the gaudiest stats — is automatically the best player in the nation. This has resulted in some relatively undistinguished quarterbacks winning the Heisman, most notably Charlie Ward in '93, Florida's Danny Wuerffel in 1996, Florida State's Chris Wenke in 2000, and Oklahoma's Jason White in 2003. All of them played for teams that were ranked at or near the top at the time they won the award.

A careful look at the record convinces me that Troy Smith is destined to join their number. But whatever happens to Smith in the NFL, Brady Quinn put up numbers this year that were at least the equal of Troy Smith's, and he did it against tougher opposition and with far less help from his teammates. By any objective yardstick, he deserves the nod over Troy Smith as the outstanding college football player of the 2006 season.

Mr. Barra is the author, most recently, of "The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear' Bryant."

(Russell Levine will give his take on who should win this year's Heisman Trophy in Friday's New York Sun)