San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Gator garners Heisman notice
Florida quarterback Kyle Trask threw six touchdown passes in the Gators’ season-opening win last week against Ole Miss. And people took notice. The performance vaulted Trask into the thick of the Heisman Trophy discussion, with ESPN listing him No. 5 in its Heisman Watch this week (he wasn’t even listed among others the week before).
Trask completed 21-of-29 passes for 268 yards and four touchdowns Saturday in No. 3-ranked Florida’s 38-24 win over South Carolina, surely strengthening his candidacy.
Overlooked in all this is the player making Trask look so good: Gators tight end Kyle Pitts.
No surprise there. Getting Heisman voters to consider a player who doesn’t have QB or RB next to his name is next to impossible.
ESPN’S 14 Heisman panelists — as well as the more than 900 Heisman voters — should sit up and pay attention to Pitts, who caught four TD passes from Trask against Ole Miss and two more against South Carolina. That means six of his 12 catches (for 227 yards) this season have gone for scores. Most of the others have come when Florida needs a big play.
A tight end has never won the Heisman Trophy.
And, please, no cards or letters about Yale’s Larry Kelley (1936) or Notre Dame’s Leon Hart (1949) both being listed as “end” when they won the Heisman. They were two-way linemen whose recognition came largely for their defensive efforts.
A tight end has not been among the top 10 players in Heisman voting since 1977, when Notre Dame’s Ken Macafee finished third.
Macafee received 55 first-place votes, probably because he played for a Fighting Irish team that won the national championship. Texas running back Earl Campbell won the Heisman that year, receiving 371 first-place votes.
Macafee had 54 catches for 797 yards and six touchdowns that season. Pitts nearly matched those numbers as a sophomore last season (54 catches, 649 yards, 5 TDS) and wasn’t even included on the John Mackey Award watch list.
If he couldn’t get some love on a list designed specifically for those at his position, what hope does Pitts have for the Heisman?
Maybe none, but that doesn’t mean he is not deserving.
To someone sitting in San Diego, Pitts shows some of the same abilities as Hall of Fame-caliber tight ends Kellen Winslow and Antonio Gates did with the Chargers.
It’s true their efforts came at the game’s highest level. Give Pitts, a definite first-round prospect in the 2021 NFL Draft, a few years and let’s see if he can make a similar impact. He may be more athletic than either Winslow or Gates.
The 6-foot-6, 240-pound Pitts has the speed and agility seldom seen in a player at his position. He is a matchup nightmare who in two games for the Gators this season has shown the ability to go up to get a high pass or reach down to get one thrown toward his toes.
“He’s been a monster. He’s been an animal and nobody can guard him,” Florida wide receiver Trevon Grimes told the Orlando Sentinel. “We’ve always known that. It was just a matter of time until everybody else knew that, and I think they know now.”
Hopefully, Heisman voters will pause a moment before reflexively marking Clemson quarterback Trevor Lawrence on their ballots.
SMU students ejected
Police emptied the SMU student section from a hillside area of Gerald J. Ford Stadium midway through the Mustangs’ game against Memphis because a majority of the students were not wearing masks and social-distancing directives were being ignored, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The issue presented itself at last week’s season opener, prompting SMU Athletic Director Rick Hart to have a greater security presence this week, saying “we will be working to adjust the behavior of a small subsection of fans who did not follow our pledge to protect, which was sent to all ticketholders.”
Face coverings and a social distance of at least 6 feet are required by SMU, which had planned to allow as many as 1,000 fans into the game. Reports were that many more students were in attendance and photos showed many of them jammed in together near the front of the section, just above the field.
Going bowling?
The Hawaii Bowl and Bahamas Bowl have joined the Redbox Bowl in deciding not to have a postseason game this year.
That leaves 39 bowl games on the schedule at this point in a situation that deserves a deeper dive in the week(s) to come.
Bowl slots for 78 teams would have been plenty three weeks ago, but the pool of teams is much larger now that all 10 FBS conferences are playing fall ball.
The competition for a bowl slot will be greater than ever given the NCAA’S Football Oversight Committee recently recommended removing the six-win requirement this season. That makes everyone and anyone eligible. A vote on the matter is expected in mid-october.
The developments could prove problematic for Group of 5 schools in general and the Mountain West in particular as bowls eye teams that move the TV needle.
The MW has a direct tie-in with the Hawaii Bowl and a secondary tie-in with the Redbox Bowl, so two options already are off the table. That leaves the conference with only four direct tie-ins — Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, L.A. Bowl, NOVA Home Loans Arizona Bowl and New Mexico Bowl.
Quick hits
Air Force was expected to be a mess on Saturday against Navy. It was the Falcons’ first game of the season. They were missing some three dozen players who left this semester as “turnbacks,” redshirts in civilian terms, because there wasn’t supposed to be a fall season. They had one returning starter on defense. They didn’t have starting quarterback Donald Hammond, who was dismissed over the summer because he was not “in good standing ” as a cadet.
So Air Force goes out and takes it to the Midshipmen, rushing for 369 yards in a 40-7 home win. Navy, which led the nation in rushing last season with 360.5 yards a game, rushed for only 90 yards (36 carries). The Midshipmen passed for 151 yards, nearly half of of it coming on a 73-yard TD pass by QB Tyger Goslin in the second quarter.
Virginia Tech managed a 38-31 win at Duke, despite missing nearly two dozen players for the second straight week, according to ESPN. Among the 21 players absent were the starters and backups at both cornerback positions. The Hokies also were missing two assistant coaches, including defensive coordinator Justin Hamilton. Virginia Tech has been impacted by a coronavirus outbreak, although the school did not indicate which of the missing personnel may have been suffering from the virus.
Expect No. 9 Texas to tumble in the national rankings after its 33-31 loss to unranked TCU. Notable stat: It was the Longhorns’ sixth loss to an unranked opponent since 2017, the most in the FBS over that span by a team in the Associated Press rankings.