He may look like the boy next door.  He may play Quarterback for Notre Dame.  He may be the guy that other guys want to be and girls want to be with.  But the bottom line is that Brady Quinn should NOT have won the Maxwell award as the "College Football Player of the year" and I believe the Maxwell Football club is a sham that should at best be disbanded and at worst, should not have the right to present any award at the CFA awards banquet.

Here's my argument:

1) It's all about stats and hype.  Brady Quinn benefits from playing Quarterback at Notre Dame.  Brady Quinn benefits from having Charlie Weiss as his coach (where in some alternate universe scenario, Weiss and Notre Dame supporters fancy him their version of Tom Brady.  Brady Quinn is NO Tom Brady!).  Brady Quinn has beaten ONE top 25 opponent in his last two years as a starter (a squeaker over Georgia Tech to start the year).  Outside of that victory he has feasted on the likes of Michigan State, Purdue, Army, Air Force, Navy, the Coast Guard Academy, the Merchant Marines, Stanford, UCLA, North Carolina, and a weakened Penn State team.  He has played no one.  He has beaten no one.  Lets look at his career "best performances" according to the Notre Dame athletic website:

Completions - 33 (Michigan State, 2005)
Attempts - 60 (Michigan State, 2005)
Yards - 487 (Michigan State, 2005)
Touchdowns - 6 (BYU, 2005)
Completion Percentage - 80.5 (at Purdue, 2005)

News flash: Michigan State, BYU and Purdue DON'T PLAY DEFENSE.  It's no wonder his career highs for completions, attempts and yards came against Michigan State, home of the "worst defensive coordinator ever!" (listen to this link if you haven't already.  It's the best 15 minutes you will have all day, I promise) 

Brady Quinn is all about inflated stats.  If that's the criteria for awarding the Player of the Year, then why didn't Colt Brennan from Hawaii get the nod.  His inflated stats are much more impressive than Quinn's. 

2) The Maxwell Club is a sham.  After the awards show, I wanted to find out more about the Maxwell club and I was stunned at what I found.  The Maxwell Club was founded in 1937 as a civic organization in eastern Pennsylvania.  It was used primarily to recognize local players and coaches until they decided to award the first College Football Player of the year in 1937.  This sounds nice and all but my question is who actually composes the voting body for the Maxwell club.  Is it players, coaches, university administrators, university presidents, conference commissioners, sportswriters.....who exactly votes on the Maxwell award?

Well, the answer is anyone willing to pay the $35 fee to join the Maxwell club gets to vote for the Maxwell award!

I guess Brady Quinn had more of his fans pony up the $35 than Troy Smith's fans.  I can not believe that the CFA and NCAA recognize the Maxwell award as a legitimate award when there are absolutely no standards to be a voter. 

If you think think the Maxwell award is rather dubious, check out the other college player award that they give out, the Bednarik Award for the College Football Defensive Player of the year.  This years award recipient was none other than Paul Posluszny, LB, Penn State.  This is actually the second year that PP has won the award.  Last year he may have been deserving (although AJ Hawk probably would have had something to say about that) but this year, there is no way he was the best defensive player in college football.  He wasn't even a first team all-american this year.  Check out SI.com's All-American team.  I can't imagine anyone believing Posluszny was the best Linebacker in the nation, let alone the best defensive player.  Here are a few Linebackers that should have been considered over PP:

LB: H.B. Blades
Sr., Pittsburgh
Ranked third nationally with 147 tackles; blocked two kicks.

LB: James Laurinaitis
Soph., Ohio State
Buckeyes' star defender had 100 tackles, eight takeaways.

LB: Patrick Willis
Sr., Ole Miss
Tackling machine, he had 137 of them, including 87 solo stops.

Does anyone else find it disturbing that an organization based out of Eastern Pennsylvania gets to vote on the Offensive and Defensive player's of the year?  Judging by their picks, it's obvious that they were 0 for 2 this year.

Just another example of where the Notre Dame machine, Brady Quinn and Charlie Weiss benefit from being who they are and not what they do.  This is a travesty.