40 Acres Sports

First loss by baseball, football, or basketball since June 12th is quite a doozy.

Check out ESPN.com’s college football index page right now.

Giant graphic about the Heisman, Vince Young and Matt Leinart get about 5% of each down in the corner while Reggie Bush gets the other 90% and his name right next to the Heisman Trophy. Add to that the story headline “Heisman preview? Bush wins Walter Camp Award” near the top of the page while Young’s Maxwell win is two thirds of the way down the page in a smaller font with “Young, Bush claim awards” as the heading.

Yeah, there’s no bias at all.

Vince Young, Jon Scott, Rod Wright, and Michael Huff are first teamers.

Beats out Pete Carrol for the award.

At least according to The Maxwell Football Club.

Vince Young took home the big award of the night at the Home Depot College Football Awards as he was named the 69th Maxwell Award as 2005 College Player of the Year. Vince beat out the USC duo of Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart, who looked positively dejected over the news. Doesn’t necessarily bode well for his Heisman chances though, as none of the last 5 Maxwell winners won the Heisman as well.

A great night for Vince and the University of Texas. Anytime a program can get this much national exposure it can have positive effects for years to come.

Two awards, two Longhorn winners.

Michael Huff beats out Clemson’s Tye Hill and Virginia Tech’s Jimmy Williams to win the 2005 Jim Thorpe Award for the best defensive back in college football. He’s the first Longhorn to ever win the award. Congratulations to Mike on the honor.

It was just announced on the 2005 Home Depot College Football Awards Show (airing now on ESPN) that Vince Young is the winner of this year’s Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award, presented annually to the nation’s best college quarterback. Congrats to Vince!

We’ll have more postseason award information and hopefully some photos soon.

Our Thoughts

Brian – Texas and Southern Cal showed again why they’re at the top of the polls. Two of the most dominating performances I’ve ever seen, especially Texas’. The Longhorn starting offense essentially played two quarters of football and still put up 70 points on what was a pretty respectable Colorado defense. USC showed they do in fact have a defense, shutting down a good UCLA Bruin offense completely. The match up on January 4th in the Rose Bowl is going to be one for the ages.

Only six games featuring top 25 teams last weekend, but when two top 5 teams go down you’re going to see a bit of shuffling going on. LSU and Virginia Tech both drop almost ten spots as they blow their BCS chances and now have to settle for the Peach and Gator Bowls respectively. The people at the Fiesta Bowl sure don’t mind, as they get to select the matchup they wanted anyways (Ohio State and Notre Dame) and only have to worry about a quiet murmur from Nike Town. 13 more days to bowl season!

Matt – Even though there weren’t many games it was still a great football weekend. I was at the Big 12 Championship to watch the Longhorns demolish (understatement) the Colorado Buffaloes. Texas scored 70 points with 7 minutes remaining in the 3rd quarter! USC also took care of business roughing up UCLA pretty bad.

So this makes for the national championship game everyone wanted, the two best teams in the nation going head-to-head in the Rose Bowl. Luckily I got a ticket to the Rose Bowl and will watching the Longhorns roll-up USC. Should be fun. See you in Pasadena!

Related Links

• Last week’s rankings
• Harris Interactive Poll (PDF, 28 KB)
• Harris Interactive Individual Panelists’ Final Team Rankings (PDF, 133 KB)
• Master Coaches Survey

I guess they received majority of top 3 votes, surprised Quinn wasn’t a finalist.

His thoughts from the day his firing from the University of Colorado was announced to everyone but him.