Takeaways from the college football season

College football fans around the country can walk away from this bowl season with several takeaways. We now know that Michigan State shouldn’t have been there and that onside kicks don’t have to be on the ground, but the most important lesson that I learned was that Derrick Henry did not deserve the Heisman trophy.

Any knowledgeable football fan watching the Rose Bowl game between Stanford and Iowa should have concluded that Christian McCaffrey was in fact the best player in the country. No questions asked. Period, the end. McCaffrey averaged 9.6 yards a carry, which, if my incredibly complicated reasoning is right, is almost a first down every carry. That’s ridiculous. Not to mention that he scored on the first offensive play for Stanford with a 75 yard receiving touchdown, blazing down the field and outrunning every Iowa defensive back. That catch probably helped his average receiving yards too, at 26.3. This dude is crazy. He averaged nearly 29 yards per kickoff return, too. I would argue that he’s one of the most versatile players in the history of college football, up there with Desmond Howard, Barry Sanders, and just a handful of others.

I also believe that Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson performed better than Alabama’s running back, Derrick Henry. Watson was the best player on the field during the national championship and everyone knew it. Watson had 405 yards passing with four touchdowns and one interception. He also had quite a few elusive plays scrambling out of the pocket, racking up 73 yards of rushing. Derrick Henry was a great player this season, breaking a few records along the way to becoming a national champion. All I’m saying is that McCaffrey and Watson were both more deserving of the Heisman this year in one of the deepest set of candidates that has come through in years.

One other takeaway that I have from this season is that even with the addition of the playoff system, there are still teams left out that really deserve a chance. The problem is that we can’t just keep expanding.

Eventually the season has to end or we’ll just have March (December) Madness in college football. The College Football Playoff really should stay at four because no matter how far we push it, people will always find a way to point fingers at the team that shouldn’t have been in or at the handful of teams that deserved to be in.