Best College Football Player of the 21st Century

[Emcee77]

If you were giving out an award for Best College Football Player of the 21st Century (So Far), who would you nominate? A couple co-workers were having this discussion at lunch and I am curious what the IE community thinks.

 

[Kaneyoufeelit]

Tebow

 

[Irish Houstonian]

Top of my head:

1. Cam Newton
2. Reggie Bush
3. Tim Tebow

 

[PraetorianND]

Reggie Bush or Matt Leinart

 

[Ironman8]

My top 10 (no order):

Cam Newton
Vince Young
Donkey Kong Suh
Jadaveon Clowney
Tim Tebow
Reggie Bush
Eric Berry
A.J. Green
Julio Jones

 

[Bobias]

Ndamukong Suh, Vince Young, Reggie Bush, Andrew Luck, and Tim Tebow come to mind as far as 21st century players are concerned. Yet I can think of soo many more who are just as deserving.

 

[Rack Em]

Let it be known that I posted in this thread before irishhog77 nominated Bruce Heggie

 

[Buster Bluth]

Ndamukong Suh
Reggie Bush
Andrew Luck

My first thought was Reggie Bush. Suh probably wins out in my book though.

 

[Emcee77]

Ndamukong Suh is in my top 5 fo sho, and probably my pick for the #1 slot. He was completely dominant at Nebraska in his senior year.

Someone who might make my top 5 and hasn't been mentioned yet: Darren McFadden

 

[Junkhead]

Cam McDaniel

 

[Emcee77]

Ndamukong Suh
Reggie Bush
Andrew Luck

My first thought was Reggie Bush. Suh probably wins out in my book though.

Yep, these were the two I immediately thought of.

The more I think about Vince Young, the more I think he deserves to be right up there. I hate when people throw around casual superlatives, but I really think that Vince Young's performance in the NCG was the greatest individual-game performance I've ever seen in college football. He put Texas on his back and took the game away from USC.

 

[ShawneeIrish]

Vince Young

 

[ClausentoTate]

Vince Young, man amongst boys.

 

[arrowryan]

Wait, no mention of Tate Forcier?

 

[FightingIrishLover7]

Jimmy Clausen.

But really, vince and Tim played out of this world.

 

[Kaneyoufeelit]

Jared Lorenzen. No italics

 

[ACamp1900]

Cam only really played one year no???


hard to give it to him regardless of how well that year turned out...

I'll take Tebow...

 

[koonja]

Tebow, Mcfadden, Suh, Bush,

and I'll reserve my 5th slot for a prediction 4 years from now.... Everett Golson.

 

[IrishLax]

Vince Young, Andrew Luck, Reggie Bush, Tebow, Manti Te'o

 

[BleedBlue&Gold]

Reggie Bush, hands down the best highschool film I've ever seen

 

[Irish Houstonian]

Here was ESPN's Top Players of the Decade

1. Tim Tebow
2. Vince Young
3. Matt Leinart
4. Reggie Bush
5. Colt McCoy
6. Adrian Peterson
7. Bryant McKinnie
8. Glenn Dorsey
9. Larry Fitzgerald
10. Terrell Suggs

 

[Buster Bluth]

Reggie Bush, hands down the best highschool film I've ever seen

and this is college

 

[In Lou I Trust]

Tebow.

 

[Irishnuke]

Tebow and then everyone else

 

[PraetorianND]

Leinart won the Heisman and went to two straight NCGs and won two of them. Crazy he isn't getting any consideration.

NCGs (subjective)
Against UM he went for 327 and 3 TDs 0 ints.
Against OU he went for 332 and 5 TDs 0 ints.
Against Texas he went for 365 1 TD 1 int.

He was at least a top 5 college player of the 21st century.

 

[SaltyND24]

I was gonna say AP...Hard to argue with Tebow being up top as far as college is concerned...Megatron would get some love from me too

 

[Kaneyoufeelit]

I was gonna say AP...Hard to argue with Tebow being up top as far as college is concerned...Megatron would get some love from me too

Are you still going to say AP? I'm surprised he hasn't been mentioned more.

 

[PraetorianND]

To be fair he also had more talent at WR, RB and OL than most QBs can dream about.

Ya but UF and Texas were also ridiculously stacked as well. Maybe that explains why many of the guys we're talking about were really not that great in the pros...

Tebow ran behind two drafted linemen, the rest of that team was stacked (Harvin, Hernandez, Pouncy, Spikes, Haden). Vince Young had 24 future NFL players on his team when Texas won. That's some serious talent.

 

[PraetorianND]

What about LaDainian Tomlinson? JK, partially pre-turn of the century.

 

[Kak7304]

Don't you guys remember that Bush's 2005 season doesn't exist anymore?

In all seriousness though, I just looked at his Wikipedia page and under "Career Highlights and Awards" is "Heisman Trophy (2005) with a line through it. It gave me a good laugh.