College football season is winding down and, with only three weeks left until the long, cold wait for bowl games, talk has turned even more fervently to the Heisman. This year has seen no real strong contender stake his claim to the award. We’ve seen no defining moments or sustained greatness. As soon as one players jumps to the top of our radar, it seems like they fall right back off.

It started with Darrin McFadden of Arkansas, who, despite being consistent all season, is playing on a mediocre team. He hasn’t raised their level of play with his own, a major part of being a Heisman candidate.

There was also Colt Brennan of Hawai’i. He put up video game stats last year, throwing for 5549 yards and 58 touchdowns while completing an insane 72% of his passes. While his numbers are down this year (3237 yards, 28 TD, 69% thru 9 games played), his team is one of two undefeateds left in college football. Sure, they played a soft schedule that included two teams from a lower division, which were last-minute additions due to the fact that Michigan and USC would not agree to play them, but undefeated is undefeated. But the knock on Brennan is that he’s a “system quarterback” and that anyone could put up the kind of numbers that he has playing in Hawai’i’s offense. This may be true, as far as passing yards goes, but he has been much much more efficient than any QB before him. That has to count for something, right?

Plus, I’m sure it doesn’t help Hawai’i games are played in the dead of night, east coast time and most of them weren’t nationally broadcast.

Then we had the Matt Ryan craze, which hit it’s peak right after he heaved a stake into the heart of the Hokies on a cold Thursday night in October. But since then his team has struggled to find a running game to help him out and he’s shown that he’s prone to interception troubles. He’s still a great QB, but the weight of throwing his whole team on his back has proven to be too much to carry for an entire season.

Then of course there are the whispers of Tim Tebow down in Florida. Only a sophomore, he has become not only the first college player EVER to score 20 passing and 20 rushing touchdowns in one season, but he has also become the SEC’s all-time leader in rushing touchdowns. As a sophomore!! But, his team has three losses. He’s a bulldozer-ish version of Matt Ryan at BC, where he has to carry his entire team on his back. The Gators have no defense to speak of, no dependable running back and only decent wide receivers. Out of the players I’ve mentioned, though, he has probably made the best case for himself, numbers-wise.

Of course, there are other players that have been (albeit briefly) mentioned in regards to the Heisman. The names of Todd Reesing(Kansas QB), Chase Daniel(Missouri QB), Graham Harrell(Texas Tech QB) and Pat White(WVU QB) come to mind.

And yet, to this point, no one has stood out. The growing parity among teams in college football has spread to the individual players. There’s more talent across the board, which makes it harder and harder to stand out as head and shoulders above the rest.

But wait, someone has. Only problem is, he’s out for the rest of the season.

Oregon QB Dennis Dixon was just starting to garner Heisman hype when he went down with a torn ACL in a nationally televised game against Arizona State. Yes, I said Arizona State and not plain old Arizona. In case you didn’t hear, he played in the Arizona game only two weeks after tearing his ACL versus the Sun Devils, which, coming from someone who has torn his ACL, is beyond insane. It’s creating quite the hubbub here in Oregon.

When I tore my ACL, I could walk fine, but pushing off and running or jogging were entirely out of the question. It wasn’t really a matter of pain as much as it was a matter of not being able to physically push off or generate any amount of force with that entire leg.

So, take into consideration that, before going out of the Arizona game, Dennis Dixon led his team down the field on three sustained drives and even scampered for a 39-yard touchdown run.

Yeah, on a torn ACL, this guy outran 11 healthy college athletes. That’s incredibly impressive. This guy is, without a doubt, Heisman material, injured or not.

First, consider that he made his team better. When he was in there, Oregon was one of the top offenses in college football, averaging 250 rushing yards and 230 passing yards a game. Once he went out, they utterly fell apart not only offensively, but defensively as well. He was the heart and soul of his team.

Second, he was efficient. He ran the offense very well and protected the football.

Third, he was the focal point on that offense and teams tried to gameplan to stop him, and they never did. Sure, he didn’t put up Tebow or Brennan-like numbers, but he knew how to get the right players into the right positions to make plays. He made the players around him better, which is what great players do.

Fourth, he played big in big games. Dixon embarrassed Michigan at the Big House, took apart the vaunted USC defense, scorched Arizona State and were it not for a teammate’s fumble at the end of the Ducks game against Cal, he would have been the hero of that game, leading his team down the field for the tying score after throwing an interception on the previous drive.

Stack those kind of intangibles up against any other candidate and see how he matches up. I’d say it’s pretty favorable. So, I’m not out-and-out saying that you have to hand him the Heisman, but I think that he should at the very least be one of the Top Three finalists, for the reasons I stated above.

Note: Faithful SodBlog readers will note that this is the second post I’ve written about Dennis Dixon and the Ducks. Being as I live in Oregon, some of you may consider this a bit of homer-ism on my part. I assure you that it’s not. I grew up in Big Ten country and still think that, on the whole, Pac-10 football is weak. I’m not really that big of an Oregon Ducks fan, as a matter of fact.

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