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.

SI.com is reporting this morning that Kyle Keown, a punter on the Vanderbilt Football team was charged with domestic assault and aggravated assault after beating up his girlfriend, Sara Treichel (a senior on the Vanderbilt Women's Swimming Team) and threatening to stab Richard Kovalchek, a backup QB at Vanderbilt and Keown's roommate. Keown is a Junior from Jessup, GA and is majoring in Human and Organizational Development (sounds like he could use a bit more "development" himself).

Now this is normally the type of story you'd expect to hear about squads at places like Miami, Florida State, Oklahoma or Nebraska.  This is normally not the type of thing you'd expect to hear about Vanderbilt.  Up until now, the most shameful thing about Vanderbilt was the fact that they granted a degree to Skip Bayless.

 In addition to this being a football incident at Vanderbilt of all places, what is it with college punters this year?  If you remember Mitch Kozad, the Northern Colorado punter that stabbed the starting punter a while back (an attack reminiscent of the Kerrigan-Harding feud).

What is it with these punters?  What is it with Vanderbilt?  Why is Skip Bayless on television?  Some how, I think all of these things are related and are signs of the Apocalypse being upon us.

Just finished watching USC and Notre Dame and all I can say is that I truly believe Notre Dame is the most overrated team in College Football. How they were ranked #5 in the BCS is absolutely beyond me. Notre Dame backers like to spew their "myths" concerning ND football but for the most part, the arguments always boil down to one master myth.

The Notre Dame Myth: "Notre Dame plays the toughest schedule in the country"

Fact: Notre Dame usually plays a tough schedule but in the past two years the schedule has been fairly soft. Last year they finished the season with the 52nd toughest schedule in the country and I don't suspect it will be much better this year. In the past two seasons, Notre Dame has played a few tough games...and they have lost them all. They have beaten ONLY one top-25 team in TWO YEARS (opening game against #16 Georgia Tech by a whopping 14-10 score). They lost to a dreadful 5-6 Michigan State team last year (at home no less) and the only teams worth a damn that they have played this year have been Michigan and USC. They were blown out in both games.

Let's see who else is on this "tough" Notre Dame schedule:

1) Service Academies (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Merchant Marines, Coast Guard Academy, etc...) - Okay, so they really only play Army, Navy and Air Force. While I have nothing but respect for our men and women in the military, none of these three programs are what I would consider strong Football programs. Check out their records. They are barely 1-AA caliber.

2) Georgia Tech - Close win. Sloppy game. Don't think they'd beat the Yellow Jackets today.

3) Penn State - No Michael Robinson, no top-25 ranking, no chance.

4) Purdue - Weakest 8-4 team in the country. Check their schedule. They were the only Big 10 team that did not have to play Ohio State OR Michigan this year and they still sucked.

5) Stanford - 1-10 record with losses to Navy and San Jose State. Absolutely pathetic and worse than any team in the Big 10, ACC, SEC or Big 12

6) UCLA - 6-5 record; under .500 in Pac-10 play. Would make for a better basketball game than football game.

7) North Carolina - See basketball comment above

So if you're a Notre Dame fan, please tell me who you've beaten this year to justify a #5 ranking and even a sniff of consideration for a spot in the BCS Championship game?

Sure ND fans want to tout the great Brady Quinn (one win over a top 25 team in two seasons) or the great Charlie Weiss and what a phenomenal coach he is (at least Bob Davie could beat USC and Ty Willingham was 10-3 in his first season and had a strength of schedule that was rated #17 in the country that year). The bottom line is that it is a travesty for a has been and functionally irrelevent program like Notre Dame to command the same respect that it did in the 70's and 80's. It is an absolute joke that they are allowed to negotiate with the BCS as if they were a conference and I can't believe they still have their National TV deal with NBC.

Touchdown Jesus, the Golden Dome, America's team, Charlie Weiss, Brady Quinn, Rudy.....I'm sick of it all and I am sick of Notre Dame. How about we wait until they can actually field a team that would be competitive with upper echelon teams by 2006 standards instead of 1986 standards (is there a slower team in the Top 15 then Notre Dame?) before we annoint them as a serious national championship contender?

"What do you mean you're flagging us for Unnecessary Sucking?!"