Tag: Polls

Poll results: Best running back in 2013 class?

Derrick Green

Derrick Green – 78%
My thoughts are pretty clear from these guys’ commitment posts and the general attitude toward these players that Green would be my choice as the top running back in the 2013 class.  Green has steadily improved throughout his high school career, going from guard to eventually being one of the top few backs in the class.  He has the size, speed, and attitude to carry that success into college.  I don’t think he’ll be the greatest back in the history of college football or anything, but I do think he will have a good career in the winged helmet.


DeVeon Smith – 17%
Smith is a guy who’s a little smaller than Green, and while he runs with an attitude, he lacks some big-play capability because of a lack of speed.  Big runs out of Smith are going to have to come on the heels of several broken tackles.  Some people like to compare Smith to Mike Hart, but Hart had to break a lot of tackles to become Michigan’s all-time leading rusher because of a lack of explosive speed; if Smith lacks some of the vision and toughness that Hart had, he’s going to struggle to become the lead guy.


Wyatt Shallman – 3%
Shallman had been insistent that he was recruited to be a tailback, but as time has gone on, it seems more and more clear that he will end up as a fullback or H-back, or maybe somewhere else entirely; after all, he did play defensive end as a high schooler.  Shallman has a chance to be an effective player, but chances are slim that his career will surpass either of the aforementioned backs’.

Poll Results: Who should win the Heisman?

We had our own poll here on Touch the Banner  and here are the results of our Heisman vote:

Johnny Manziel – QB – Texas A&M: 52%
Manti Te’o – LB – Notre Dame: 21%
Collin Klein – QB – Kansas State: 13%
Marquise Lee – WR – USC: 8%
Braxton Miller – QB – Ohio State: 1%
Other: 2%

Manziel, of course, was awarded the trophy on Saturday evening, becoming the first freshman – albeit a redshirt freshman – to win the trophy.  This comes just a few years after Florida quarterback Tim Tebow became the first sophomore to win the award.

Interestingly, the order of the TTB poll exactly mirrored the voting of actual, certified voters.  Here’s the real voting, by total points (first place votes are in parentheses):

Manziel: 2,029 (474)
Te’o: 1,706 (321)
Klein: 894 (60)
Lee: 207 (19)
Miller: 144 (3)
Jadeveon Clowney – DE – South Carolina: 61 (4)
Jordan Lynch – QB – Northern Illinois: 52 (3)
Tavon Austin – WR – West Virginia: 47 (6)
Kenjon Barner – RB – Oregon: 42 (1)
Jarvis Jones – LB – Georgia: 41 (1)

Personally, I voted for Manziel and wanted him to win.  He completed 68.3% of his passes for 3,419 yards, 24 touchdowns, and 8 interceptions; he also ran 184 times for 1,181 yards and 19 touchdowns.  Altogether, he had 4,600 yards and 43 touchdowns while leading his team to a 10-2 record and a victory over then #1 Alabama.  He set an FBS record for total yards.

Media darling Te’o, who finished tied for #2 in the country with 7 interceptions, didn’t have remarkable statistics in any other category.  He also had plenty of opportunities to build up those statistics, because Notre Dame played a large number of close games.  Despite being ranked #1 with a 12-0 record, the Irish won five games by a single score, including two overtime victories.  Despite plenty of time on the field, he was tied for 59th in tackles, had just 5.5 tackles for loss, and notched just 1.5 sacks.  I just don’t think a middle linebacker who finishes #59 in tackles deserves to beat out a quarterback who set a national record for total yards.

Of course, it was frequently pointed out that Te’o could have become the second “primarily defensive player” to win the Heisman Trophy, after Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson won in 1997.  Let’s compare their statistics.

Woodson, 1997: 44 tackles, 5 tackles for loss, 1 sack, 9 pass breakups, 8 interceptions; 1/1 passing for 28 yards, 5 rushing attempts for 21 yards and 1 touchdown, 12 receptions for 238 yards and 2 touchdowns, 36 punt returns for 301 yards and 1 touchdown

Te’o, 2012: 103 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks, 4 pass breakups, 7 interceptions, 1 fumble recovery

Te’o obviously blows Woodson away in tackles due to his position, but every other statistic is virtually even . . . except for the fact that Woodson played offensive and special teams, accounting for 560 yards and 4 touchdowns.  Admittedly, we’re comparing different seasons and not voting across the years, but the standard has always been that offensive players win the award, with the lone “defensive” player contributing in all phases of the game.  That standard would be lowered significantly, in my opinion, if someone with Te’o’s stat line were good enough to win the award.  Aside from the fluky interception total (Te’o is a four year starter but had zero  interceptions coming into this season), those numbers are relatively pedestrian.  Consider that Michigan safety Jordan Kovacs in 2010 had 116 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss, 1 sack, 1 forced fumble, 1 fumble recovery, and 2 interceptions.  Te’o is simply the best player on the #1 team in the country – which happens to be NBC’s baby Notre Dame – and that’s what put him in the discussion.

Klein (3,380 total yards, 37 touchdowns), Lee (1,680 receiving yards, 17 total touchdowns), and Miller (3,310 yards, 28 touchdowns) each had good seasons, but none compared to Manziel.  This was a good choice by the voters.

Poll Results: Should Michigan have re-offered David Dawson?

Yes: 80%
No: 20%

I do not particularly agree with the decision to re-offer Detroit (MI) Cass Tech offensive lineman David Dawson.  Dawson committed to Michigan in the spring, decommitted a couple weeks ago by visiting Florida, and was re-offered late last week.  Michigan has a policy in place that will no longer hold a spot for players who visit elsewhere, but they pulled Dawson’s offer completely when he failed to be forthright about visiting Florida.

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere, but I think there’s the potential for Michigan recruits not to respect Hoke’s “No Visit Policy” in the future.  And they would have at least a decent argument for doing so.  I realize Dawson has had a rough time with the loss of his father, and some people think that’s good enough reason to give him another shot.  And maybe it is.  But I think it potentially starts a slippery slope.  What about a kid whose dad left the family recently?  What about a kid whose dad goes to jail?  What about a kid whose dad is abusive?  There are all kinds of family troubles out there, and you either have a policy or you don’t.

Poll Results: How will Maryland and Rutgers affect the Big Ten?

Last week I asked the question of how the addition of Maryland and Rutgers would affect the Big Ten overall.

Negatively: 58%
Positively: 28%
Not at all: 18%

I don’t think most Big Ten fans are happy about Maryland and Rutgers entering the equation, but I do imagine that it will be good for those two schools themselves.  I can see why they jumped on the idea.  New Jersey produces a ton of football talent, and now those kids can stay right at home and play while their families watch from the stands.  Playing in the Big East didn’t have the same ring to it, which is why so many of those kids would go far away to play ball.  Michigan, for exampled, pulled in several kids from New Jersey over the past few years – Anthony Lalota, Marcus Witherspoon, J.B. Fitzgerald, Brandon Smith, etc. And while things didn’t work out that well in Ann Arbor for, well, any of them, both Lalota and Witherspoon went back home to play for the Scarlet Knights when they couldn’t hack it at Michigan.  Smith didn’t quite make it back to New Jersey – he just transferred to Temple.  Fitzgerald was a career backup at Michigan.  If given the chance, I wonder which of those four would still have chosen Michigan if their home-state Rutgers team played in the Big Ten already.

Maryland also has fairly fertile recruiting grounds in the forms of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.  Kids from those areas go all over the place to play, but mostly the Big East and the ACC up until now.  Maryland, though, got a couple national recruits (Stefon Diggs, Wes Brown) to stay home in the 2012 recruiting class, and perhaps they might stay home a little more often in the future.  There’s less incentive for kids from the eastern seaboard to go to places like Michigan, Ohio State, and Penn State.  So while this move might benefit the programs at Maryland and Rutgers, it might thin out the talent in the rest of the conference.  I still don’t think a bunch of elite kids will be committing to the Terrapins, because they simply don’t have the history and track record to be extremely enticing.  But those second-level kids, the low 4-star and high 3-star type of kids might prefer a chance to start at Maryland rather than ride the bench and play special teams in Columbus or Ann Arbor.

Of course, this is a very narrow look at the effect of conference expansion on recruiting, but overall, I do not see this as a positive trend for the Big Ten or college football in general.  At some point the NCAA has to put a limit on conference size . . . or perhaps the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and Pac-12 will become the new Division I, while the other members of the current FBS will become a de facto Division I-AA.

Poll Results: Who will win the Big Ten this year?

Wow, you Michigan fans sure are confident in your team.  I figured a bunch of readers would choose the Wolverines, but I didn’t think it would be three out of every four people.

So who do Touch the Banner  readers think will be Big Ten champs?

Michigan: 76%
Nebraska: 7%
Michigan State: 5%
Other: 5%
Ohio State: 4%
Northwestern: 2%
Wisconsin: 0%