25 greatest college football players, I guess

by Suckatsports

ESPN is doing its yearly count down of something. This year, it happens to be the 25 greatest college football players, to culminate at the 2008 Rose Bowl. It's an interesting idea, and not much from their departure of the greatest players based on number.

I won't count down my own, but I do have concerns to one specific person: Archie Griffin - he's 21st. I'm baffled to figure out who voted on such a thing to not put him in the top 5, top 10, or even top 20 of the greatest college football players to play the game. He just managed to win two Heisman trophies, an award from my understand for the most outstanding college football player of all time. No one has before, or since him duplicated that feat.

I fail to see how the only player to have been the best in college football twice fails to make it into the top 5. And the players ahead of him: Vince Young, Charles Woodson are all good players but Vince Young didn't even win the Heisman (maybe he was robbed, I'll give you that). I'm struggling to understand the criteria by which these were ranked. Or is it a policy of such recent disdain for Ohio State football success to mark other historical accomplishments more trivial?

And to quickly allude to the injustice of the greatest CFB player by number: 47. It went to Miami WR Michael Irvin, with merely honorable mentions including Ohio State RB Chic Harley. This is just a poor job of historical analysis, because Chic Harley wasn't just a RB, he played nearly every position on the field.

He single handily beat Michigan for the first time, at a time when only Michigan was even playing college football, and Ohio State was just an agricultural college. Out of the three years he played (1916, 1917, 1919), he was All America all three times one year missing when he went to fight in WWI. He became the charter inductee of the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951. If the Heisman was given out when he played, many experts agree he would have won it, possibly multiple times. It was because of him that Ohio Stadium was even conceived and built, as the original field that he played on was not big enough to hold all the spectators, hence Ohio Stadium is often referred to as, "The House that Harley Built." But yeah, apparently Michael Irvin was a better college football player, what a disgrace.

> In 1950 Harley was voted a first-team halfback on the Associated Press college football All-Star team for the first half of the 20th century. The other first-team halfback was Jim Thorpe. Red Grange was voted to the second team. When asked to explain his vote, one writer said, "Red Grange was a great runner, but that's all he was. Chic Harley was a great runner, a great passer, a great kicker and a great defensive back. That's why he's on my first-team." [1] In 1951 Harley was one of 44 players and coaches selected as the charter members of the College Football Hall of Fame

One can only hope that he is not passed up for a top 5 spot in this countdown, because in combination with Archie Griffin being 21, this would be an abomination.

25 Greatest College Football Players [ESPN.com]

Greatest CFB player based on number [ESPN.com]

Chic Harley [Wikipedia]

This post is cross-published from We Suck at Sports.