Herschel Walker, who won the 1980 Heisman Trophy for Georgia, recently admitted to a radio show that Clemson was actually his first choice.

“My parents really wanted me to go to Georgia,” Walker told the reporter. I told them, ‘I’m not going to Georgia. I’m not going to Georgia.’ So I ended up flipping a coin and pulled the names out of a bag and Georgia won. And I said I’m going to Georgia and didn’t really mean it.

“My parents called Coach Dooley … and they told him and everybody else, ‘Herschel has decided to go Georgia.’ He showed up at my home that night and I was too embarrassed to tell him I was joking so I ended up signing and going to Georgia.”

At the time, it was probably a huge disappointment for the Tigers, who were coming off a top 10 recruiting class in 1979. But really, it didn’t turn out too bad, did it?

After all, while Walker led Georgia to the national title in 1980, Clemson went 12-0 and won the national championship in 1981.

Included in that perfect record was a 13-3 win over Walker’s Dawgs.

Clemson didn’t need Herschel Walker in 1981

I generally refer to the Heisman as ‘the most prestigious award in sports’, but here is one man’s ranking of the sports trophies he covets most.

The Heisman comes in second:

The most imitated pose in sports. At 13.5 inches high and weighing 25 pounds, the famous bronze football player holding the ball in his left hand and stiff-arming would-be tacklers never stops running. College football’s winner gets to keep it, meaning former Ohio State star Archie Griffin has the only pair of bookends. And, hey, it can come in handy if you’re clearly an innocent man in need of extra cash because you’ve been found liable in civil court for the deaths of your ex-wife and her friend. Just a thought.

Okay, it’s July, but the Heisman race has already begun. Much of what happens in the preseason shapes how voters will look at the candidates come December.

At Heismanpundit, we’ve tended to focus on which players have the best chance to actually win rather than trying to discern how the top 10 will end up.

But here’s a rundown of the present state of the race and where the votes would fall if tallied today:

1. Brady Quinn, Notre Dame–He’s had a solid off-season in the publicity arena, showing up on several preseason magazines and getting good mileage out of a sitdown in South Bend with national college football writers. He is also helped by Notre Dame’s high national profile and its expected top three ranking in the polls. He is the clear frontrunner and–like Matt Leinart in 2004–the ‘default’ candidate for the majority of voters. If he doesn’t screw up, or if another player doesn’t have a clearly superior season, he’ll win.

2. Adrian Peterson, Oklahoma–In almost any other year, Peterson would be the clear frontrunner, but as in his freshman year, he is going up against a player whose team has a ton of cache in the broader college football culture. He is also helped by Oklahoma’s predicted return to the top five of the polls, but the enthusiasm for his candidacy is tempered a bit by his injury history and the state of the rebuilt Sooner offensive line.

3. Troy Smith, Ohio State–The Buckeye quarterback is the leading dark horse candidate for 2006. I say ‘dark horse’ because, despite being on a traditional power/national title contender, he is significantly behind Quinn and Peterson as far as name recognition goes. But if he has a great statistical year while leading Ohio State on a national title run, he could break through.

4. Brian Brohm, Louisville–Once we get to the fourth spot, we are talking about the beginning of the ultra-longshots. Brohm plays for a non-traditional power, but is rightly viewed as a talented, efficient quarterback leading one of the top offenses in the country–and quite possibly one of the top teams. Louisville recently launched a publicity campaign for Brohm and his teammate, Michael Bush, so his name is starting to get bandied about in Heisman circles.

5. Ted Ginn, Ohio State–Ginn is an attractive preseason candidate and his name and flash would pick up some votes right now. However, when the season comes, he is unlikely to put up the numbers needed to be a serious candidate and I’d be shocked if he actually made it into the top five of the final vote.

6. Chris Leak, Florida–Leak gets this spot purely from the combination of name recognition and what has been a solid career thus far. It’s pretty clear, however, that he’s not a good fit for Urban Meyer’s offense (a conclusion I was too slow to come to last year), but if he can find a way to put up big numbers–and lead Florida to a bunch of wins–he’d be a viable candidate.

7. Paul Posluszny, Penn State–The reigning Butkus winner has good name recognition (despite the tough spelling) and would end up in the top 10 if the vote were held today.

8. Dwayne Jarrett, USC–Wide receivers who don’t also return punts and kicks can’t win the Heisman, but they can pick up a few votes here and there. Jarrett is the frontrunner for the Biletnikoff and a touchdown machine, so he would pick up some scattered support right now.

9. Marshawn Lynch, Cal–The Bear tailback has had a good couple years and big things are expected for him in 2006, so he’s seen as a contender out West.

10. Kenny Irons, Auburn–He’s been touted as a darkhorse candidate by some in the media, so there’s a little bit of buzz out there for him.

Obviously, this order will change as the season approaches and then gets underway. But for now, consider it a rough guide on which players are currently in position to pick up some Heisman votes in 2006.

The Mighty Quinn is on top right now

Will be back then with some fresh commentary….

With all the hype over Notre Dame quarterback commit Jimmy Clausen, there’s precious little attention being given to some of the other top high school signal callers out there.

I recently had a chance to look at tape of some of them and, let me tell you, Clausen wasn’t the one that impressed me the most.

No, that honor goes to Clemson-bound Willy Korn out of Duncan, South Carolina. He is rated a 5-star player by Rivals.com.

The 6-2, 200-pounder is incredible both running and passing and has a lot of the intangibles–the magic, if you will–necessary to be a great quarterback.

He reminds me of Cade McNown, but with more size, athleticism and arm strength. McNown was one of the better college quarterbacks in recent memory, so comparing Korn to him says a lot. He is a perfect fit for Clemson’s spread offense and I expect he will terrorize the ACC for years to come.

One other plus for the Tigers–he’s going to enroll in January.

Clemson got a good one

A recent post by the Wizard of Odds got me thinking about which programs around the country are doing the best–at underachieving, that is.

There are some schools that just can’t seem to get things going despite having natural recruiting bases, easy admissions standards, a decent football tradition, or fantastic locations.

Here’s a few that I think could be national powers under the right circumstances.

1. Illinois–An occasional hiccup of success notwithstanding, Illinois has been fairly awful, going to just 11 bowls in the last 40 years and winning just three Big Ten titles during the same time span. Illinois is a populous state featuring the nation’s third-largest city and it is adjacent to several other talent-rich states, so why the continuous underachievement? How is in-state rival Northwestern able to get the job done, while the Illini struggle to get to two wins?

Look no further than the horrible coaching hires that have gone down in Champaign. John Mackovic, Lou Tepper, Ron Turner and Ron Zook are the four most recent head coaches–really a disastrous group.

The facilities are some of the worst in the Big Ten, as the Illini play in 73-year-old Memorial Stadium, which opened when Red Grange was still on the team. Athletic Director Ron Guenther seems to have thrown in the towel, resigned to the fact that the Illini are a basketball school.

The school that produced Grange, Dick Butkus, Tony Eason and most recently Simeon Rice and Kevin Hardy, should be doing better.

2. Missouri–The Tigers haven’t really been any good since the days of Dan Devine in the 1960s. Again, a bad slate of coaches is the culprit, as Woody Widenhofer, Bob Stull, Larry Smith and now Garry Pinkel have hardly set the world on fire.

Mizzou seems to have a problem establishing an identity. It’s a border state that is smack dab between the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC. It should be able to dip into the rich talent pools of Arkansas and Memphis and grab the occasional blue chipper from the heartland or upstate Illinois, but it struggles to do so. And the best players in the state often head to places like Notre Dame or (inexcusably in the case of Laurence Maroney) Minnesota.

That will continue until Mizzou commits itself to being a winner.

3. Arizona State–ASU is often referred to by Pac-10 administrators as a ‘sleeping giant’ thanks to its remarkable athletic facilities, easy admissions standards, weather and relative proximity to the fertile recruiting grounds of Texas and Southern California.

It’s not like ASU hasn’t had decent success over the years. As recently as 1996, the Sun Devils were a play away from winning a national title. Indeed, ASU has had many outstanding seasons over the last 35 years, including a 62-9 run under Frank Kush in the early 1970s, a couple top ten finishes under Darryl Rogers in the early 1980s, a Rose Bowl win under John Cooper in 1986 and most recently a 9-3 record under Dirk Koetter.

But sandwiched in between those years are a lot of 5-6, 4-7 and 6-5 seasons. For some reason, the Sun Devils can’t seem to keep things rolling once they find success.

Perhaps a coach that has been exposed to the big time might do the trick.

4. North Carolina–Apart from a couple great years under Mack Brown in the 1990s and under Dick Crum in the early 1980s, UNC has done little to shed its reputation as just a basketball school.

Once again, we have a fine school with a good recruiting base that can’t seem to get untracked on the gridiron.

One possible explanation is that not enough top football recruits want to go to a school where they will be overshadowed by the basketball team.

I’ll bet that not very many quality coaches want to play second fiddle to Roy Williams, either. If UNC can find a prominent football coach that isn’t a shrinking violet, it can be much, much better.

5. Houston–The Cougars were very good under Bill Yeoman from 1962 until the early 1980s and then things started getting iffy.

Jack Pardee had some brief success in the late 1980s with Andre Ware, but the Cougars have been pretty awful ever since. The breakup of the Southwest Conference really hurt the program, which is now stuck in Conference USA.

That’s no excuse, however, as the city of Houston has some of the best football talent in the country. The Cougars just haven’t been able to get enough of that talent to stay local.

You’d think a former SWC power with an exciting offense in a major city with a good talent base would be better, but it isn’t. Instead of being another Louisville, Houston is just treading water.

Other programs that probably should be better than they are:

Hawaii
San Diego State
Arkansas
Michigan State
Pitt
UCLA
Memphis
SMU