It goes without saying that the Heisman Trophy is the most overrated award in all of sports. There are many reasons why this is true, not the least of them being that the award is given out too early.
Fortunately, there is the Maxwell Award, which is presented to the college football player of the year.
It's bad enough that those incompetent Heisman Trophy goobers cheated Charley Trippi out of the 1946 award, but couldn't they at least have bothered to spell his name correctly? Ah, well . . . at least Trippi won the one that counted. (Photograph from The New Georgia Encyclopedia.)
This brings us to the question, "Who or what is the Maxwell Pundit?"
One answer is that he is a fictitious weblogger from one of my more sarcastic and attention-getting moments, but the real answer is that he is---or, rather, we are---the brainchild of Rakes of Mallow and Sunday Morning Quarterback.
Here is how Rakes' proprietor explains it:
Each week, and I realize there will be votes all over the place for the first month or two, a group of college football blogs whose rooting interests are scattered throughout the country will submit their top five Maxwell Award winner selections, providing commentary and arguments for their picks. Most importantly, the varied perspectives will allow all of us who don't get to see every game every week gain the knowledge of great individual performances from a eclectic group of watchful eyes. At the end of the season - the bowl season, so the most important games are included in who wins the award - we'll give out this beautiful trophy to a deserving individual, regardless of position or alma mater.
In addition to the host and S.M.Q., those participating in this exercise will be The Blue-Gray Sky, Bruins Nation, Burnt Orange Nation, Conquest Chronicles, Deadspin, Every Day Should Be Saturday, Georgia Sports Blog, MGoBlog, StateFans Nation, TrojanWire, and Dawg Sports.
Fear not, Nestor; Special Agent Dana Scully, a onetime resident of California, will be keeping a close eye out for any empirical evidence of an East Coast bias.
While the "Maxwell Pundit" label is somewhat tongue-in-cheek---the leap from the blogosphere to the punditocracy, after all, would be a step down, as noted by an astute reader at MGoBlog---this enterprise is nevertheless a worthwhile one.
My thanks go out to Rakes of Mallow for coming up with the idea and I am looking forward to participating in this latest effort to wrest intercollegiate athletics from the sinister clutches of the professional sportstainment industry.
Go 'Dawgs!