With the Heisman Trophy, timing is everything

 I’d do terrible, awful things to get a Heisman vote.

Well, I would have before this season. Right now I’m grateful I don’t have to make a choice, because the nation’s top-three candidates are all deserving for different reasons. And each one has a resume with a significant hole.

Only choosing one doesn’t seem fair, although it’s easy to eliminate one of the three. Manti Te‘o has as good of a chance of hoisting the Heisman trophy Dec. 8 in New York as I do of winning a Pulitzer Prize.

My boss, Chase Glorfield, wrote Monday that the senior Notre Dame linebacker has his vote — if he had one — for the Heisman, an award given to the individual designated as the most outstanding college football player of the year. I’m not sure I don’t feel the same way. At least a vote for Te‘o is a sharp departure from the norm.

Too many Heisman voters — there’s 928 of them, including the one fan vote sponsored by Nissan! — seem to take a gander at who’s in the national championship and pick whoever is that team’s top offensive threat.

Or, and this is what happened last year, voters fall blindly in love with the new hot name. Robert Griffin III was no better than a fringe Heisman contender before last season started, but the Baylor quarterback, despite his team’s three losses, took college football’s greatest award back to Waco, Texas, because Andrew Luck didn’t really do anything we hadn’t seen from him before. In other words, Luck’s redshirt junior season was excellent, much like his redshirt sophomore season and much like everyone thought it would be.

Griffin, however, with a flair for the dramatic, lobbed bombs to Baylor’s deep threats and sprinted around the field while sporting a signature look — his left arm in a sleeve while his throwing arm remained bare — and passed for a bunch of yards (4,293) and touchdowns (37).

By the time Luck’s final season rolled around, we’d heard his story before and knew he was the nation’s best quarterback as the NFL “Suck for Luck” campaigns were in full swing.

Griffin was new, different and enticing.

This season, the preseason favorite, USC quarterback Matt Barkley, was a sure thing. He had stiff-armed the NFL to return for his senior season. He was the lead man for The Associated Press’ No. 1 team, and his story was something new, because the Trojans were coming off a two-year bowl ban. Who doesn’t like a story of redemption?

But then USC lost to Stanford, Arizona and Oregon. By the time Barkley went down with a shoulder injury and USC lost again, this time to city-rival UCLA, he had faded from Heisman contention.

In his absence, Collin Klein, leader of the 10-1 Kansas State Wildcats, and Johnny Manziel, freshman phenom of the Texas A&M Aggies, stepped in and filled the front-running position. Well, Klein did until he threw three picks on the road to Robert Griffin’s old team, the Baylor Bears.

It was an ugly loss and it came a week after Klein had a narrower-than-expected-win over TCU.

Any Heisman candidate needs a strong push finishing the season to draw voter’s attention. Klein’s numbers in his last two games: 39-of-71 for 431 yards, two touchdowns and four interceptions. On the ground, Klein had another three touchdowns but he managed only 2.78 yards per carry.

And his team lost to a 4-5 Baylor squad by four touchdowns.

Meanwhile, Manziel has been brilliant.

With one game left in the regular season, Manziel’s 4,600 total yards are already more than Cam Newton had in 2010.

He’s helped a team with a new coach and a different system reach 10 wins in the vaunted SEC West, and he introduced himself to the public conscious Nov. 10 when he beat No. 1 Alabama on the road — throwing for 253 yards and two scores while racking up another 91 yards on the ground.

The hole in Manziel’s resume? The Kerrville, Texas, native struggled in the second half during the Aggies’ two losses (449 combined total yards with zero passing touchdowns and three interceptions). But those perfomances came early in the season. Texas A&M hasn’t lost since Oct. 20.

And I already eliminated Te‘o from Heisman contention, assuming voters’ hands freeze with fear before writing down someone’s name that doesn’t play offense. Klein, despite a scintillating season, lost a conference game on the road he never should’ve.

Does that logic really leave us at the doorstep of handing over the 2012 Heisman Trophy to Johnny Manziel?

Simply enough, yes. Agree or disagree, at least he’s not Mark Ingram.