Graham Harrell Gets No Invite

[Knowmystuff]

Besides the State Championship game in Lubbock this weeked...they have some other great football talk going on in Lubbock...I guess everyone has heard that Texax Tech's QB Graham Harrell didn't even make the the list of Heisman Finalists. I can not believe this! Personnally I think he should have won it, but want to know what others think about this....

 

[6manex]

I do not believe that he should have necessarily won it, but I am upset that he did not recieve an invitation. He is by far the best passing quarterback in the nation, but because the Heisman Trophy factors in rushing yards as well, Harrell is inadequate for the win. Nevertheless, he should be going to New York, and I feel he was royally shafted because of it.

 

[lbk419]

I am in agreement that this was quite an injustice. However, given that they essentially take the natural cutpoint in the votes, I think that there must have been a resounding number that voted Tebow, Bradford, McCoy in some particular order, to the point that few voted for Harrell at all. Seems that he was dropped out of consideration entirely, just as Tech was, following the OU game.

I think the next injustice they can do would be to give it to Bradford. I think he's more of just the guy that fits in Bob Stoops system, while I think Tebow and McCoy are truly great quarterbacks. We'll see though.

 

[Mustang76]

Good point lbk419 about the vote cutoff. We were discussing this under Bowl Season also. While I am one who in the past has stated that Tech QB's simply thrive under the "system" I feel that Harrell deserved the trip becuase of his body of work this year. What did you think of Leach's comments?

 

[Lubbock]

It shouldn't really be surprising. QBs have to have a good end of season to make a statement and he just didn't. Tech lost as big as A&M to OU and then laid an egg against Baylor when they could have easily been beat.
Running up stats early in the year just doesn't count when voters cast their ballots.

Although the stats throughout Harrell's carreer are good, I think the arguement could be made that Crabtree was the better player on the team.

Just my opinion, though. With two other really good QBs from the Big 12 in the mix, it isn't an injustice for him to be left out. Tech, Harrell, Crabtree and Leach have had a wonderful season and this shouldn't take anything away from it.

 

[coach_jshelton]

perhaps in these hard economic times that we're living in, the DAC can only afford to fly the top three vote-getters to NYC.

 

[cowboyfan40]

Harrell is NOT "by far the best passing quarterback in the nation", he may have the best numbers but that is Tech's system. McCoy and Bradford had a higher completion percentage then Harrell. I hope the top 2 are McCoy/Tebow, but am afraid Bradford may win it. I think Bradford is more of a product of Stoops system like Jason White was. If Bradford wins it, hopefully he will have a Jason White game in the Championship game.......

 

[BAMF500]

Harrell is NOT "by far the best passing quarterback in the nation", he may have the best numbers but that is Tech's system. McCoy and Bradford had a higher completion percentage then Harrell. I hope the top 2 are McCoy/Tebow, but am afraid Bradford may win it. I think Bradford is more of a product of Stoops system like Jason White was. If Bradford wins it, hopefully he will have a Jason White game in the Championship game.......

Check your stats cheif. McCoy had a higher completion rating yes, but Harrell also had almost 200 more attempts than him.
Bradfords completion percentage was less, and he threw 160 some odd less passes than Harrell. Harrell is the best passing QB in the nation and should have gotten an invite. Bottom Line.

 

[granger]

We could knitpick these guys all day long, but the bottom line is that Harrell should have been one of the finalists. I don't think he is the best passing qb, but by golly he sure is up there in the discussion.

After reading more about this from a national perspective, it appears he was the victim of having his worst game on a very public stage against OU. Combine that with Tebow's performance last weekend (he probably really wasn't in the conversation 4 weeks ago) and GH got placed on the bottom or left off of a lot of ballots.

Then there's the little thing of what does the Heisman really represent? Is it the best player or MVP? There is no clear cut definition.

I will sound like a homer here, but I would have put Colt at the top of my ballot (and barely). He did more with less than any one of those guys. Let's remember OU, Florida and, yes in some places, Tech were all picked preseason to be better than Texas.

Bradford is really good, but he can camp out behind the best O-line in the country all day long. Tebow is amazing. I love watching him play. Harrell is great, but then again he is plagued by the TT offensive reputation (took a few years for that rep to not hurt a UH qb back in the day). He also had Crabtree, who many might actually think is the MVP of that team (right or wrong).

BTW, there is a great NY Times article from this week about Harrell and his folks in NYC... his dad says some great things
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/sport ... on.html?em

 

[Mustang76]

Thanks Granger, that was a great article. I will probably always pine for a playoff but have to admit that I do enjoy the bowls.

 

[The Assassin]

I wouldn't be bad if we went to a playoff system, but I prefer the Bowl games due to the different conference match-ups. But on the other hand if they could get a playoff system ending in the Bowl system it would be cool. Personally I think the BCS hasn't been to bad in the 10 years we have had the system implicated. Besides this year of course, only in 2001 when a two loss Nebraska team played Miami without winning the Big 12 and the 2003 split championship between USC and LSU have been real questionable BCS years. I think the BCS is a big improvement over the old two poll system that had quite a few more split national championships. Even this year as much as I like Texas, I still don't like Splits.

On the Harrell situation, it is a bunch of bull that he isn't at least a finalist. He deserves to be there whether or not he has a chance to win it. I think Harrell is without a doubt the MVP of Tech, but it won't be until next year that we really forget how important he was. This may be the closest vote in Heisman history, but it is interesting to see how having two QB's from the same division of the same conference effect their chances.

 

[Lubbock]

If you'd look a little closer at how the voting for the trophy is done, you wouldn't be at all surprised that Harrell is not in New York.

Ballots are cast for a person's top three players: #1 player on the ballot gets 3 points, the #2 player gets 2 points and the #3 player gets 1 point. The winner is the player with the most points.

Players are invited to attend the ceremony based upon the "natural break" in voting. For instance let's say:

Player A gets 22% of the points,
Player B gets 18% of the points,
Player C gets 14% of the points,
Player D gets 2% of the points and
Player E gets 1% ot the points
and all other players get 1% or less of the total point count.

Player A, B and C would get invited to New York, no others would. That seems to be the way it is this year. The committee has (and someone correct me if this is wrong), invited up to 6 players but never fewer than three. This tells us that the voting this year was very tight and between very few players....Bradford, McCoy & Tebow being at the top of that list. (listed alphabetically, not how I'd vote them necessarily)

The arguement can be made that a very good Bradford and McCoy took votes away from Harrell who is in the same conference. They had big games down the stretch and Harrell got beat up in Norman and almost lost one late in Waco.

It can also be argued that Harrell is not even the best player on his own team...that distinction may lay with Crabtree, who I'd assume also got some votes.

No matter the outcome, the players that are considered and tossed about in these kinds of discussions prove in my mind, that the toughest competition is in the Big 12.

 

[Lubbock]

I didn't know who true my assessment would be until today when I looked up the final vote tally on http://www.stiffarmtrophy.com/

Here is a final point count of the votes for this year's Heisman:

Bradford 467
Tebow 431
McCoy 415
Harrell 23
Greene 12
Crabtree 7
Rolle 5
Ringer 3
Robinson3
Hall 2
White 2
Harvin 2
Maualuga 2
Johnson 1
Davis 1
Spikes 1
Bryant 1
Stafford 1

By my count that is 1397 points spread between 18 players.

If you round off to whole numbers:

Bradford got 33% of the voting points
Tebow got 31% of the voting points
McCoy got 30% of the voting points
Harrell got 2% of the voting points
Greene got 1% of the voting points
Crabtree got almost 1% of the voting points
everyone got less than 1% of the voting points

So, rather than blame the committee for not inviting Harrell, perhaps you should focus on the voters who failed to put him on their ballot. The committee is in tough place because if they invite Harrell, it is hard not to justify inviting the rest of the players on the list.

IMO, they got the invitees right. The natural break was between McCoy's 30% and Harrell's 2%.