You have to trust me on this, but our projected order of finish in the Heisman Trophy voting that appears on the right side of the home page for this site (Jake’s Hot Half Dozen) was posted early Friday.    Check it out to understanding why all the self-congratulations.

OK, now that I have dismounted my high horse, we can see that some suspicions about the Heisman contest have been confirmed.  Specifically, what matters most is how a player does in his final nationally televised game and how the television analysts respond to it.

Mark Ingram’s statistics simply were not Heisman caliber, by far the worst of any running back who has won the Heisman in the past 40 years.   And rushing for just 30 yards in the final regularly-scheduled game against Auburn should have doomed him.    But he had a pretty good game against Florida in the Southeastern Conference title games, with 113 rushing yards and 76 receiving yards.  More important was that it launched Alabama to No. 1.   And even more impoirtant than that was having TV’s talking heads delcare that Ingram sure looked like a Heisman winner.

Nebrasks defensive tackle Ndamakong Suh was not even in the Heisman discussion before the Big 12 title game, but he ended up fourth in the voting because he had a monster game.    Colt McCoy’s mediocre performance in that game knocked him for first to third in the Heisman race.

Stanford running back Toby Gerhart came within just a few votes of overcoming two major obstacles: 1. His team did not play on the final weekend when most voters were deciding.  2. His team finished ranked No. 19, and not since 1969 has a player won the Heisman from a team ranked so low.

If the voting had been handled the way it had been in the past, McCoy would have won, with Gerhart second.   But because, for the first time, the voting was exclusively electronic, most voters waited until after the final weekend’s games to cast their vote.

Two notes:  It was the first time since 1994,when Rashaan Salaam and Ki-Jana Carter finished 1-2,  and only the second times since 1981, that a quarterback did not finish among the top two in the voting. 

It was only the second time since 1972 that an interior defensive lineman finished in the top four (Washington defensive tackle was fourth in 1991).