Our season long journey of the Bloguin Heisman Poll has come down to one last vote. For 13 weeks we have debated and voted on who will win the prestigious trophy. Andrew Luck has been #1 on the overall ballot for 8 of the 13 weeks, RG3 has been #1 for 3 of the 13 weeks and Trent Richardson and Marcus Lattimore sat at the top of the mountain for one week each. The last three weeks has seen three different front-runners with Alabama's Trent Richardson finally taking the crown in Week 13. Last week Trent Richardson and Andrew Luck sat the sidelines while RG3, Montee Ball and Case Keenum all had one last chance to make their impression on the voters. Yesterday, Robert Griffin III was named "Offensive Player of the Year" in the Bloguin College Football Awards. Can he take home the Bloguin Heisman as well?

Here is what you'll see each week in the Bloguin Heisman Poll:

-The Top total vote getters and quotes from bloggers in support of their candidates.
-A list of all players that receive votes in the Bloguin Heisman Poll
-Poll Notes that look at some of the interesting facts, figures, and trends of the poll.
-The BHP Roll Call of voters, the links to their respective blogs and their twitter accounts.

Without any further adieu, the Bloguin Heisman Poll...

College football's finest were honored Thursday night in Orlando during The Home Depot College Football Awards Show on ESPNU. There were some obvious choices and perhaps a surprise or two. Here is a run down of all the winners from the annual awards show.

Maxwell Award - Andrew Luck, Stanford
College Player of the Year

Luck is the second player from Stanford to be named the Maxwell Award winner (Jim Plunkett, 1970). Despite being a player of the year award, the Maxwell Award does not a great predictor for the Heisman Trophy. Only three times since 2000 has the Maxwell Award winner been named the Heisman Trophy winner in the same season (Jason White, Tim Tebow, Cam Newton).

The Walter Camp All-America Team Player of the Year - Andrew Luck, Stanford 

For the third straight year, the same player won the Maxwell Award and Walter Camp Award as player of the year (Cam Newton, Colt McCoy).

Chuck Bednarik Award - Tyrann Mathieu, LSU
College Defensive Player of the Year

For the second straight year, an LSU defensive back has won the Chuck Bednarik Award. The award has generally been dominated by linebackers, as you might expect due to the award's namesake, but Mathieu joins Patrick Peterson and Charles Woodson as the third defensive back to win the award presented by The Maxwell Club. LSU becomes the third school to have multiple Bednarik Award winners. Northwestern head coach Pat Fitzgerald won the first two awards handed out in 1995 and 1996, and Penn State linebackers have hauled in four awards (including two by Paul Posluszny).

Davey O'Brien National Quarterback Award - Robert Griffin III, Baylor
Nation's Best Quarterback

RG3 becomes the first Baylor quarterback to win the nation's top quarterback award. Big 12 quarterbacks have combined for seven Davey O'Brien Awards (eight if you include Nebraska's Eric Crouch).

The Davey O'Brian Award winner has gone on to win the Heisman Trophy seven times since 2000 and has won a total of 14 Heisman Trophy awards since 1981, the year of the first Davey O'Brien Award. Big 12 players winning Davey O'Brien Awards have gone on to win three Heisman Trophy awards in the same season (Eric Crouch in 2001, Jason White in 2003, Sam Bradford in 2008).

Biletnikoff Award - Justin Blackmon, Oklahoma State
Nation's Most Outstanding Receiver

Justin Blackmon joins Texas Tech's Michael Crabtree as the only player to win multiple and back-to-back Biletnokoff Awards. He wins his second straight award despite seeing his offensive production dip in receiving yards, receiving average and touchdowns this season. Blackmon and Crabtree are the only Big 12 players to win the award, which was introduced in 1994.

Doak Walker Award - Trent Richardson, Alabama
Nation's Most Outstanding Running Back 

Trent Richardson is the first Alabama player to win the Doak Walker Award, introduced in 1990. Five Doak Walker Award winners have gone on to win the Heisman Trophy, but none of those players have come out of the SEC.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times: The college football coaching carousel is the equivalent of a daytime soap opera for men in their 20’s and 30’s. Come the last weekend of November, names, faces and jobs changes faster than those in Derek Jeter’s blackberry when he’s looking for a booty call.

Still, no matter how closely you follow the coaching movements (and believe me, a loser like me follows it at a disgusting alarming rate) there is just some stuff you simply can’t anticipate. Like an announcement that came late Thursday night, when Kansas University announced their next head football coach.

That man? Charlie Weis.

Yep, that Charlie Weis, the former Notre Dame head coach, current Florida offensive coordinator, and he of a “decided tactical advantage,” will be spending his falls and winters in Kansas. To the people of Lawrence I recommend to you one warning: Hide the women and children!

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way, and say that this came from absolutely nowhere, at least as far as I can tell. Over the last three years Weis has had three jobs (fired Notre Dame head coach, Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator and offensive coordinator at Florida), and in his latest, he seemed to be getting comfortable in Gainesville. While his pro-style offense struggled in the short term (the Gators were just 72nd in college football in scoring this year), it was hard to blame Weis, who inherited mismatched puzzle pieces from Urban Meyer’s old spread scheme. Chris Rainey and Jeff Demps may have made sense playing under Meyer, but they served little value in what the new regime was trying to do. Still, you can’t blame Weis for that. To put it in layman’s terms, he was trying to make a Thanksgiving dinner without a turkey.

If you’re a regular reader of Crystal Ball Run, you know that in the past, we’ve had our fun with the Ole Miss football program. Well, really, I take that back. More so, we’ve had our fun with the bumbling, stumbling fool that masqueraded as their ex-head coach, Houston Nut.

Really, to say that Houston Nutt was a “bad head coach,” would be like saying, “Michael Lohan is a bad father.” Quite frankly, it’s the understatement of the century.

Over the last four years (and really, the last two year in specific), Nutt was running much more a three-ring circus than a football program. During that stretch his team was comically awful, going 6-18 in his final two years in Oxford, with just one win over an SEC program in that stretch. Along the way, there were losses to Vanderbilt twice, Kentucky once, and a season-opening defeat to I-AA Jacksonville State to open the 2010 season. Yes, that actually happened. Not to mention three straight losses to Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl, which might not seem like a big deal to you, at least until you realize that Ole Miss hadn’t lost to State three times in a row since the early 1940’s.

As we’ve also mentioned though, Nutt’s failures went well beyond what happened on the field, and if anything, his greatest blunders have come off of it. His players got arrested for all kinds of problems with the law, he made a mockery of NCAA signing limitations, and above all, even when his players were healthy and able to play, too often they were doing dumb stuff to get them suspended or booted from the team. By the end of this past season, any number of players had been suspended for silly little stuff, including- but not limited to- the starting quarterback and two starting running backs. Seriously, what self-respecting football program has its veterans and leaders getting suspended before key games? The problem was, all that stuff was commonplace under Nutt.

no comments

As we head into this weekend, we know the question that everyone is asking themselves. We know that everybody wants to know if it can happen again. Is it even possible for something that rare to happen that many times in a row? We are only one round of football and 48 hours away from finding out the answer to that very question.

If you aren’t aware of what I’m talking about then let me explain it. For six consecutive years both Mount Union or Wisconsin-Whitewater have made the Division III National Championship in Salem, Va. Each is only one game away from making it seven straight. Can they do it? Here is the breakdown.

no comments

This college football season will be remembered for the rematch in the national title game and the dismay towards the BCS, but it was really so much more.

On the first Friday night of the season Robert Griffin III captured the awe and imagination of every college football fan as he led the Baylor Bears to an upset win over TCU to kick off the season. LSU proved week in and week out that it was the country's dominant team, picking off Oregon, Mississippi State, West Virginia, Florida, Auburn, Alabama, Arkansas and Georgia on it's way to the BCS title game. Alabama, Stanford, Oregon, Oklahoma State and many others tried to make their case as No. 2 as the season moved to a close.

This year was also defined more by great games and finishes (Baylor-TCU, South Carolina-Georgia, Michigan-Notre Dame, Wisconsin-Michigan State, LSU-Alabama, Stanford-USC, TCU-Boise St., Oklahoma-Baylor and much more) instead of an individual like it has been in the recent past (Cam Newton, Tim Tebow).

If you are a fan of college football, this season had a little bit of everything for you. The Bloguin network and it's college football bloggers are proud to bring you our 2011 College Football Awards.

We are now guaranteed a new national champion in Division II this year as we head into the semifinals. Our first semifinal offers a battle between two Cinderellas who were never supposed to get this far. The second brings two of the top teams all year long together in what should be an epic showdown. Both games will be aired nationally on CBS College Sports so be sure to turn in for some college football postseason the way its supposed to be done.

Winston-Salem State v. Wayne State

It's a shame that the two Cinderella stories of these playoffs have to play in the semifinals, as opposed to meeting in the finals to conclude their story the way it should be. No matter what happens on Saturday, nobody can take away what these two teams have accomplished thus far.

When Winston-Salem has the ball...

The Rams come into this game 13-0 and feature one of the most unstoppable backs in all of Division II in Nicholas Cooper. Cooper has run for 1,712 yards and 21 TDs so far this season and has scored seven TDs in the playoffs. He has yet to be held to under 100 yards and will have to be the focus of the Wayne State defense.

Hello everybody!

Hope everyone is enjoying their first week without major college football since August. Take a breath, relax and smile, because we’ve all been through quite a bit in the last 14 weeks.

(And please, for the love of God, if you haven’t seen your family since before Labor Day- like our entire staff for example- please, go spend some time with them. They’ve been patient with you these last four months and deserve your attention… well, at least until the bowl games kick off anyway.)

Regardless, we at Crystal Ball Run appreciate you and everything you’ve done for us this fall. Since we launched this website in early August, you all have supported us and helped us grow as both writers and thinkers. The site wouldn’t be nearly what it is today without each and every one of you, and we look forward to continuing to grow with you in the coming weeks, months and (if you can stand us!) years.

And as our appreciation for all that you’ve done, we’d like to reward you, by offering an invitation to the first ever Crystal Ball Run Bowl Game Pick ‘Em!

How it works is simple: All you’ve got to do is click on this link, which will lead you to a pool already set up by our good friends over at FunOfficePools.com.

Once there you can sign up for an account (if you don’t have one already) and pick winners of all the bowl games. Also, be sure to make your “confidence picks” as well, to help determine tiebreaks. (Confidence points are basically exactly what they sound like; you selecting each game, No. 1-35 and picking which games and teams you’re most confident in. So for example, if you are more confident that LSU will beat Alabama above every other game this bowl season, then you’d select LSU as “No. 35” in your confidence picks.)

That sounds complicated but it really isn’t, and if you all have any questions, just shoot us an e-mail at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Now, to the fun part.

In addition to competing for the simple pride of beating our writers, we do also have some fun prizes to hand out as well. And luckily, none of the prizes will count as an extra benefit, or hurt any NCAA eligibility you may still have remaining (Free tattoos handed out separately).

Here is the following prize structure, to be determined by the participant who has the most points at the end of the bowl season.

no comments

UNC has named Larry Fedora its next head football coach. In July of this year, we laid out our thoughts on the situation at UNC and named a few names for who we thought might be solid replacements for Butch Davis.

Larry Fedora was not on our list. Fedora will take over a UNC program that we believe is a sleeping giant of a program. Since 2002, the Tar Heels have had an average recruiting ranking of 22.20 (only Miami and Florida State have had better talent since 2002 in the ACC) and certainly have the name recognition, local talent base, and resources to compete for ACC Championships.

However, when we refer to UNC being a sleeping giant, it's important to remember that someone has to wake them up from their sleeping state. Over the last eleven seasons, the Tar Heels have had five losing seasons, lost at least five games in each and every year, never won their side of the ACC or competed for a conference championship, and have not finished a single season ranked in the AP Top 25. Don't forget that UNC was doing (or not doing) all of this with top 25 talent. So, is Larry Fedora the right man to wake UNC from its slumber? Below is our analysis of the hire:

(Editor's note: All week long, Crystal Ball Run's staff is handing out their postseason awards, in the aptly titled "Awards Week." Today, staff writer Michael Felder is taking a look at his "Effort of the Year," which was given by San Jose State's Duke Ihenacho.)

There are a lot of reasons that people watch football: the pageantry, the entertainment of 22 guys going up and down the field, the points, the big hits, because it's on and old alma mater is playing. All of those are good enough reasons to watch the sport I love, and each of those is a reason that I tune into as much college football as I can on the regular.

However, those are not the primary reasons that I hunker down in the fortress and get lost in hours upon hours of football.

Truth be told, I'm a nuance and a "love" guy. The X's and O's of the game really get me going. Third-down decisions and spinning safeties to combat a dominate wide receiver are at the top of what I'm watching the game to see. How a team attacks the 3-4 defense or how long it takes an offensive coordinator to give up on the inside run when someone is plugging the middle is what makes me enjoy football.

But, that's not the only reason. Sitting up there with being ridiculously intrigued by the little things within the game is the reason I wished more people watched football: I love it. I love the game, that's why I like the minutia of it all, but, more importantly, I love these kids.

I absolutely love them. They're giving up summers to work towards the same goal, putting up W's. They're signing up for a possible lifetime of arthritis, joint replacement and nagging injuries for a game they love. They're dealing with screaming men and being embarrassed in film by wrong decisions to get better one day at a time. They're pouring out blood, sweat and tears for their teammates, their school and ultimately the game.