Monday, April 21, 2008

I'll buy it -- because I remember the contemptible Vince Young injustice

Bill Simmons says that Kevin Garnett is the MVP and I'll buy it. I'll buy it because I remember the Reggie Bush / Vince Young Heisman debates. I remember saying, "Wait, you Heisman voters...have any of you people watched Mack Brown's teams for the last five or six years? Set aside VY's stats. His coach is a guy who recruits super-talented teams and then very carefully teaches them to have the approximate mental toughness of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, Pre-Demonic-Possession Version. This is a guy who, everywhere he has gone, has recruited better talent than anybody else, and yet in his entire career has yet to win even one single conference championship at any level -- a man whose teams define the very word "underachieve." This is a guy who once had a twenty-year-old quarterback who was trying to man up and take responsibility for a bad performance, and interrupted the boy in order to behave like the kid was six years old...and seemed to think that in so doing he was doing the kid a favor (and do you remember the sick look on Simms's face as Mack did his rant? since Simms, unlike Mack, actually knew something about leadership). Ladies and gentlemen, your Mack Brown era...until Vince Young walked in the door and said, "Screw this bulls***, we're football players and by God we're gonna play like it." In the last half a century has any football player ever single-handedly transformed the entire psyche of a gutless, incomparably under-achieving team into his image rather than his coach's, and somehow made the coach love him for it as much as everybody else did? In his entire life has Mack Brown ever coached a team that could have risen to the Ohio State challenge? In his entire life, will Mack Brown ever again coach such a team once Vince Young leaves? How can you not give Vince the Heisman trophy for this year, and throw in next year's too just as a bonus?"

And that was before the national championship game. Anybody still think I was wrong and Reggie deserved the Heisman over Vince?

Not that I still feel strongly about it or anything.

So, Bill, I'm with you. Vince -- oh, sorry, KG -- for MVP!

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