Dan Shafer's Blog

I don't follow college football very closely any more. For many years, I preferred the NCAA's brand of the sport to the NFL's glitzy package of predictability but after I stopped living in a college town, my interest waned. I do, however, try to keep a Heisman Watch most seasons. And because I'm not a fan of a particular college or conference, I think I'm generally pretty objective in my assessment of top college talent. I'm also traditionally lousy at predicting the outcomes.

This season, there has not seemed to me to be a clear leader of that elite pack. This morning, San Jose Mercury News sports columnist Mark Purdy changed all that. This morning, I jumped on the bandwagon of Stanford University running bck Toby Gerhart. To find out why, you should read Purdy's column explaining why everyone -- at least in the Bay Area -- should want this young man to walk away with the classically posed trophy Saturday night at the New York awards ceremony. Not only is he arguably the best player in college football (as he amply demonstrated in the Cardinal's season-ending game at Notre Dame on national TV), he's a superb student, multi-talented (and multi-sport) guy, and scion of an All-American small-town family right out of Central Casting. His story is so enchanted and enchanting, that, as Purdy says, Hallmark's Hall of Fame would reject the script as too good to be true.

My guess is that Gerhart doesn't have a realistic shot. West Coast schools are always downplayed on the national scene, largely because time zone differences mean that East Coast sports writers, who hold all the sway in such matters, seldom get to see outstanding players from the Left Coast. When it comes time to cast ballots, they focus on the candidates from the East and MIdwest whom they've watched on TV or seen play live. Nearly equally important, I am sure, is the overactive hype machines that crank up before each NCAA gridiron season to tout Heisman candidates. Gerhart had no such machine at his disposal. And yet he made it to the Final Five. So while I don't think he has a real shot at the trophy, I'm going to be pulling for him nonetheless. Read Purdy's column and maybe you will be, too.