2012 College Football Horse Collar
Awards
It took me longer to
get my awards entry done this year. Much longer. Looking back, I have no idea
how I managed to complete it prior to February last season. I was never close
to doing so this year. At this point, hardly anybody is still thinking about
the 2012 season, as signing day has come and gone and the NFL draft approaches.
But that’s okay because, well, you imaginary readers are the only ones who read
this stuff anyway.
Judging
the 2012 CFB Season: A Superfluous and Forced Introduction
It was just another
amazing year for college football. It’s really something: I could talk for
hours about all that’s wrong with the game, yet in my opinion it is currently
the most interesting American sport. There were times this season when I felt
like this year wouldn’t match up with some of the best seasons in recent
memory. But by the time the 2012 season came to a conclusion it was right up
there with every other year.
For a moment, it
appeared the SEC’s streak of national titles would come to an end, not due to a
team from outside the conference beating an SEC team in the BCS National
Championship Game, but due to the conference being shutout of the championship
game all together. Then on one crazy Saturday night in mid-November the top 2
teams both fell and suddenly the SEC was right back in the driver’s seat.
Everyone knew whoever won the SEC Championship would take the national title if
given the opportunity. Alabama got that chance after all.
The Tide destroyed
Notre Dame to win a second straight title and third in four years. The SEC has
now won 7 straight BCS titles. For the second year in a row there were moments
when it was fair to wonder if another conference had at least pulled even with
the SEC in terms of overall strength. In the end, however, it was clear that
the SEC is still on a different level than the rest of the FBS.
Next year will be the
final season under the current BCS format, with the 4-team playoff and the
selection committee due to take over in 2014. Conference reputation may not be
quite as important when there are 4 landing spots rather than just 2 for the
national playoff, but it will remain crucial. It’ll be interesting to see if
the SEC can end the BCS era with their streak still intact.
About
My Awards Blog Format
The format for this year
is very similar to last year. You may notice that the comments are not quite as
lengthy this year. I simply don’t have the time to do as much of that as I used
to. More importantly, it seems like it actually takes me a lot longer to do
that sort of thing than it used to, so I’m really hit on both ends: I have less
time and it seems to take me longer to do the same amount. This has been a
theme throughout all of the different blogs on The Horse Collar this year.
Structurally these
awards are almost exactly the same as last year. I did decide to create an
additional award this year for the top return man in college football. In
addition, I list the top 3 individual performances for both offense and defense
this year.
Also, you will notice
that the “memorable moments” portion of this entry is missing. I decided to do
something a little bit different with the moments this year. Rather than coming
up with an unordered list of the most memorable moments and then coming up with
a list of the worst moments, I decided to tell the story of the 2012 season
from start to finish in 271 “moments.” This ended up making the “moments”
section exponentially larger than usual.
So I had to separate that section into its own entry. You’ll figure it out when
you read the “2012 Season in 271 Moments” entry of the College Football Blog
(wink).
You may notice that
there are no recaps for the various “Best Games” throughout the entry. I know
it will stun all of my faithful imaginary readers out there to learn that when
I wrote the recaps for the games I ended up going a little overboard. I tried
to make them brief but it just didn’t work out. Eventually I decided to move
the recaps to a separate entry. If you’re interested, you can find those recaps
in the “Best Games of the Year” entry of the College Football Blog that will
follow this one.
One late note to add
here: I had planned to post this all as one entry, without splitting it up into
different “parts.” However, Blogger is making that an impossibility. So I will
have to split this up into several “parts.”
Proverbial
Disclaimer
You imaginary readers
know what’s coming next: my obligatory acknowledgement of my limitations in
attempting to do an awards entry such as this. I don’t have access to film. I
don’t have time to watch a dozen recorded games during the week. All I can do
is watch as much football as possible on Saturdays (and obviously on every
other day that there is college football) and then pore over the numbers
available on the internet. I don’t have all the numbers and I have no guarantee
that the stats which I do have are 100% accurate. I try my best to come up with
a legit final product. I actually think these are my best CFB awards yet.
There are certain
aspects of my awards that are probably different from awards handed out by
professional journalists and other bloggers. Notably, I select a top offensive
line unit rather than top individual linemen at each position. I’m simply not
able to give an original opinion on who the best offensive linemen are and I’m
certainly not qualified to say which ones played the best in any given year. It
works much better for me to look at the stats and choose a top offensive line.
That’s all for the
disclaimer. I just don’t have the time or the energy to construct lengthy
introductions anymore. That is perhaps not the worst thing that could have
happened to this blog. Here are my 2012 College Football Horse Collar Awards.
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