Heading from one coast to the other ...

It’s already time to say “So Long” to the East Coast, and start turning my attention to the other one. It was a pretty amazing trip, even if the weather was beyond lousy the past couple of days.

You may not have known this, but when the Heisman Trophy was conceived it was called the DAC Trophy after the Downtown Athletic Club to recognize the best college football player east of the Mississippi River. When Jay Berwanger of Chicago won, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

Now? Yeah right.

I’ve been hearing from friends around the country who were blown away by not only his win, but acceptance speech and the way Ingram has handled himself through this whole thing.

The photos you may have seen of Mark doing the press conference after the announcement Saturday were from the Marriott Marquis, in what’s normally a large bar/restaurant overlooking Times Square, adjacent to another lavish bar/restaurant. I think it was when Colt McCoy was at the podium you could rear the road from Ingram walking into the area.

As for me, I’m still trying to put it all into perspective of just how unlikely this all was. Although the closest voting in history was 1985, when only 45 votes separated Auburn running back Bo Jackson from the runner-up Chuck Long of Iowa, a better comparison was the highly controversial 1956 decision when Notre Dame’s Paul Hornung became the only Heisman winner from a losing team.

Among those he beat out were Johnny Majors of Tennessee, Tom McDonald of Oklahoma, Jerry Tubbs of Oklahoma, Jim Brown of Syracuse, Ron Kramer of Michigan and John Brodie of Stanford. Hornung’s margin of victory was just 72 points.

The big difference from that vote was that I have absolutely no doubt that Ingram deserved to win.

[This was a postcard I posted on BamaOnline]