Next huge NFL flop to be designated this evening.

…Graham Harrell spared this potential fate.

Colt McCoy of Texas, Sam Bradford of Oklahoma and Tim Tebow of Florida, the designee last year, will be on hand at the Downtown Athletic Club this evening for the presentation of the Heisman Trophy.

Harrell’s exclusion from this party would appear to be puzzling as his team, the Texas Tech Red Raiders share identical 11-1 records with the 3 finalists’ teams and he has passed for more yards than the 3 finalists.

The Heisman committee claims, though, that the voting tally determines who goes to New York.

Coordinator of the Heisman Trophy Trust, Tim Henning: "It's not a mathematical formula that determines the number of invitees. It's just wherever there is a natural breaking point in the voting,", i.e. Harrell did not get anywhere near the number of votes that McCoy, Bradford or Tebow did.

So who’s going to win it? There’s two general themes circulating. One is that Bradford and McCoy, the two Big 12 QBs will split votes leaving an opening for Tebow. The other contention is that voters will not vote for Tebow thus denying him a 2-fer, something not seen in these parts since the mid 70s when Ohio State’s Archie Griffin became the only player to win it back to back. Allowing Tebow to go back to back would be sacrosanct… or something.

We’re going with Tebow as we think voters recognize the fact that there is absolutely no defense played in the Big 12 and while Bradford and McCoy are fine quarterbacks, those gaudy stats they have piled-up are as much a result of this fact as anything else. So, mark it down: future NFL fullback, Tim Tebow will take home the hardware this evening.

A quick note on the national championship betting line: the money hasn’t reacted to Florida’s offensive coordinator, Dan Mullen, being named head coach at Mississippi State and his uncertainty as to whether or not he will relinquish his duties at Florida to full-time it at Miss. St. Florida remains 3 point favorites and this indicates that the betting public sees the key match up as Florida’s defense vs. Oklahoma’s offense and not the Gator O vs. the Sooner D.

Why we love this big ol' wacky country of ours...

... because we are a diverse nation and a nation possessing of a region and some folks from that region that are praying for the quarterback of a team that just tanked this past Saturday against Ole Miss... but not for the reasons you may think. More here from DeadSpin with the added bonus of the web's best and most irreverant commenters.

If a Colt plays QB on Oahu, does it make any noise?

So there sits one Colt Brennan -- arguably the hottest college QB prospect in the land (Those in Louisville may disagree) -- a respectable 6th place finish in last year's Heisman trophy race. A life redeemed. And not one casual college football fan outside of the states of Hawaii and Colorado could tell you who he is. Why?

As "Terminator II" taught us: This is no fate but what we make.

Right or wrong, Brennan and the UH Rainbow Warriors will toil in relative anonymity for most of the season -- a late season matchup with Boise State aside. That is the price they pay for being geographically undesirable (Only college football could make the islands of Hawaii geographically undesirable! In the NFL, it's a reward. Of course, it's a mandatory curfew for Oahu residents when the NFL makes their annual trip there. Any person caught on the streets after 9 p.m. is liable to get shot... by NFL players! But I digress...). Of course, Brennan had a prime spot lined up in football-mad Big XII Country with the Buffs at one point, and what he made of his fate there took him to a tropical paradise where UH Warrior football is important -- to the entire population of Hawaii and not anywhere else.

So what do you do if your Brennan? Zip off TD passes in record numbers against defenses like, well, Boise State. Now I'm not here to argue that Boise State had the greatest defense since the Fearsome Foursome. But whatever they had was good enough to win the Fiesta Bowl against Oklahoma (And, oh by the way, the Broncos figure to be even better this year). Brennan and the Warriors -- never ones to be shrinking violets -- also took on Oregon State and ASU (Schools that make LSU fans a little nervous) last year. So maybe that onslaught that Brennan put up last year should be looked at with more than just a passing, "Yeah, but that's just the WAC." The degrees of separation between doing it against San Jose State and doing it against Ohio State on any given day are, perhaps, not as wide a gulf as it appears.

And for Brennan's encore this season? Ya gotta run the table, bud. Anything so much as a stumble and east coast fans, east coast pollsters, and east coast Heisman voters will turn off whatever TV coverage they have of you and stop looking for you in the Monday papers (Hawaii is at such a disadvantage papers back in the Original 13 don't even carry so much as a box score of them until Monday, if they do at all). It's too bad, because the talent is there. Matt Leinart had a bad game and it was, "Well, you can't expect that guy to take down the Auburn's of the world single-handedly every game, every week". Brennan doesn't have that luxury. If not...

Hasta la vista, baby.

The Substitute