The 2010 Heisman Trophy winner will be announced tonight between 5 and 6pm pacific time. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of Auburn QB Cam Newton walking away with the award, with Stanford QB Andrew Luck battling Oregon RB LaMichael James battling it out for second place. In fact, Stiff Arm Trophy has already called the race for Newton. Stiff Arm Trophy basically does the legwork to try and determine the Heisman Trophy winner as soon as possible.
Many of the voters write columns about their selection and are willing to publicly stand by their selection. Stiff Arm Trophy compiles all this data to figure out the winner. They called the race yesterday for Newton after determining 18% of the total ballots. Based on those ballots, the website predicted he would end up with approximately 86% of the possible 2,778 points available.
Since that time they’ve received 22 additional ballots that lower Newton’s projection to 84%. Andrew Luck has been the benficiary of those additional ballots as he appears to be pulling away from LaMichael James. Luck has nine first place votes to James’ two. There are a vast majority of ballots still to come, but Luck is in a position for a very solid second place.
Of the 168 ballots received, SAT stated that 13 left Newton off the ballot entirely. It would seem that leaving him off the ballot would only be because of the controversy surrounding Newton and his father. I’m not saying that’s right or wrong, but if a voter can justify any other reason, I’d love to hear it.
Bay Area writer Monte Poole voted Andrew Luck first and Cam Newton second. His justification was this:
It was a fairly simple process. I generally vote for the best player I see in person. That’s Luck. He’s a fantastic passer, a fearless and effective leader who was the player most responsible for the Cardinal’s top-five ranking.
Though Luck is not as mesmerizing as Newton, the two were so close in so many ways, I feel obligated and comfortable with rewarding the man with the cleaner résumé.
What I found interesting was his article headline, “With Heisman vote, I won’t snub Newton but I have Luck first.” The first paragraph quoted above indicates he thought Luck was better. Of course he doesn’t actually say if he’s seen Cam Newton play in person. If that’s the case, that’s kind of odd.
However, the second paragraph seemed to go against the stated spirit of his vote. It seems like he did use the character questions in part in deciding Luck over Newton. I suppose that might not be snubbing Newton, but it sounds that way to me. Poole is entitled to vote however he wants, but his vote and his justification seem a bit off.
We’ll be here later tonight for the Heisman Trophy Presentation. For more on Andrew Luck and the Stanford Cardinal, check out Rule of Tree.