I do not understand how anyone could vote against Jalen Hurts.
His performance is unprecedented.
And yet, he is not the favorite.
This is nuts.
If you don’t know the Hurts story, here goes.
- As a true freshman,† he led Alabama to the national championship game. Alabama lost by 4 points, after Clemson put together three 65+ yard drives in the last 14 minutes (and took the lead for the first time with 1 second left to play).
- As a true sophomore, he led Alabama to the national championship game again, but was benched at halftime. Tagovailoa came in and Alabama came back won.
- As a true junior he was benched in favor of Tagovailoa. He was hurt in the SEC Championship game when Alabama was behind. In came Hurts, and Alabama came back and won the game. Oh, and Tagovailoa was back for the national championship, which Alabama lost, and in which Hurts did not play.
- He then graduated from Alabama halfway through his junior year, and used his onetime graduate student exemption to transfer to Oklahoma without having to sit out a year.
- Now, Oklahoma is a very good team this year, and is on a five season tear through the Big 12. But, it isn’t nothing to be 12-1, conference champion, and back in the top 4 playing for a national championship. And they’ve done it with Hurts (as a true senior) at quarterback.
No one has ever taken 2 colleges this high in the college rankings.
† The modifier “true” when applied to college athletes implies an exact number of years after high school. So a true freshman is one year out of high school and is almost always 18, and so on through 2, 3, and 4 years, and ages 19, 20, and 21.
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