So they should hold it against Larry that he didn't play defense?
Thanks Cookie…your coworker knows…
- Thread starter Fk_Pitt
- Start date
nope, they held it against him because his team went 7-5...its what they do....Everyone knows this going in....other than Paul Hornung do you know of any other player to win the Heisman from a team with that lousy of a record? Pitt goes 10-2 and wins their conference and goes to a major bowl he probably wins it...Just the way it is.
Yeah, um, we know it is a single-season award.
My point in listing the Great Hugh Green's career stats was to show just how underserving those other two were to be in the conversation.
Trying to think back on HG’s pro career. I was only a kid so just remember it vaguely; it was underwhelming, but was it a case of drafted/playing for a crappy team (the Bucs)? Was he used out of position (tried to make him strictly a coverage OLB as I recall; today he’d likely be a hybrid DE). Or did he get nagging injuries? All of the above?
And it should have included the Heisman.
Just think, in Green's final season - 12 games - #99 had 123 combined tackles. TWELVE GAMES, 10.25 per game.
Young, in 34 games, 98 combined tackles for 2.88 per game, and Hutchinson had 166 in 36 games for 4.61 per game.
Wrong. He beat Texas A&M on the road just after that. It was a bad loss, but beating the Aggie’s in the Texas heat restored a ton of goodwill.
I think Walt’s downfall came from not realizing that actually winning games counted for more than winning pretty.
1981: Third in AP Defensive Rookie of the Year behind Lawrence Taylor, Ronnie Lott and in front of Kenny Easley. NFL All-Rookie Team
1982: 1st Team All-Conference UPI, Pro Football Writers, Pro Football Weekly; 2nd Team AP & made the Pro Bowl
1983: 1st Team All-Conference UPI, Pro Football Weekly, Sporting News; 2nd Team AP & made the Pro Bowl
In 1984 he was in a car crash and I think it was an orbital bone fracture. In 1986 he had a knee injury.
His career lasted until 1991. He played part of five seasons with Tampa and part of seven for Miami. In 1985 he played for both teams.
Dude was flat out a badass. College Football Hall of Fame, ESPN ranked him the 14th greatest among the top-25 list of players in college football history. In 1999 he was listed in Sports Illustrated's All-Century team. The Sporting News named him as an All-Time All-American. I saw one list where he was ranked #2, behind Dick Butkus, as college football's all-time defensive players.
Thanks for those details. All I had access to then was Pgh media, which then was essentially the Post-Gazette and true to form (which teen me was oblivious to then) they utterly ‘cancelled’ Pitt guys after they moved on, even, maybe especially, Hugh Green(I’ve no doubt the equivalent of Cook and the actual Smizik voted for George Rogers for the HT) . And if the guy happened to play in the NFC, and not for Dallas or maybe Washington (then, like now, almost always the “NFC games” we would get shown in this region, though Green Bay has mostly replaced Washington now), forget ever hearing of them again.
That and the fact that his agent thought he was repping the second coming of Pop Warner.
What's ironic is Green was in fact the best player on the best team that year.
Remember how he fared in the bowl game against Hugh?
George Rodgers should run for Senate in South Carolina like that other guy in Georgia. Rodgers actually said "my goal is to run for 1000 yards or 1500 yards, whichever came first."
idk, I still go with Toledo. Just like losing to WVU in 2009 was the beginning of Wanny's downfall, even after the rousing Tire Bowl championship.
Yeah there was renewed hope after A&M (who finished with losing record that year), but that was quickly squashed by ND, WVU and finally Miami. So I kind of point to the Toledo game as the beginning of the end.
We’ve seen a number of defensive players in recent years get Heisman *consideration* (Jameis was a deserving winner) despite not having as dominant a year as Donald did in 2013. No outrage, just saying… outrage would be more warranted if Pitt was better and he still wasn’t in the mix. Sweeping basically every other award he could was fine though.
He never saw a player like Green up to that point. Hugh was a man among boys in college.
Oklahoma had five or six guys on that team who were better than him.
At least.
