Ndam That!

If I were vice chairman and head of the invitations committee at New York's Downtown Athletic Club, I would prepare invites to this year's Heisman Trophy ceremony for one quarterback, two tailbacks and one defensive predator.

Predator? Ndam that!

Ndam would be Ndamukong. As in Ndamukong Suh (pronounced En-DOM-ah-ken SOO). As in, the defensive lineman from the University of Nebraska that is so dominating--or En-DOM-a-ken-ating if you will--that he has single-handedly transformed the Cornhusker defense from bottom feeder (they weren't in the top 100 statistically last season) to top-20 nationally recognized menace. The 6'4", 308-pound defensive end deserves a place (or two, or maybe even three) at this year's presentation alongside Texas Longhorn quarterback Colt McCoy, Stanford University tailback Toby Gerhart and senior Alabama tailback Mark Ingram.

A late bloomer in this year's Heisman race, Suh was surely a sight to see on the biggest stage. The part-African (Cameroon), part-Jamaican phenom tossed McCoy around his backfield like a catnip mouse as Nebraska, two-touchdown underdogs heading into last Saturday's Big 12 Championship game, took mighty Texas to the very last second and then some.

Forget the set-up job at the end of the game. Never mind the heavy hands and wringing hands of the vested interests whose act of collective panic not only turned back time, it turned major college football into Saturday Night RAW! What they did to "ensure" a Texas-SEC BCS Championship will have to be the subject of a future rant... er, post.

I'd rather focus on the one player who by himself all but gave the BCS shaken-playoff-formula syndrome.

Ndamukong's interesting name belies a complexity of Heisman support points. (Evidently NCAA rules prohibit amateur athletes from buying a vowel.) Suh has scored twice in his career, two touchdowns off of five interceptions... mundane stats for a DB but extraordinarily impressive considering that he's a defensive tackle. As a down lineman he ranks among the nation's best defensive backs in passes defended. All told, after thirteen games, Suh leads the Huskers with 82 tackles (23 for loss), 12 sacks, 1 interception, 10 passes broken up, 24 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble and 3 blocked kicks.

Ndamukong is as unpronounceable as he is improbable. His statistics are like so many numbers of a connect-the-dots picture who on their own cannot possibly illustrate the degree of his impact. Stitched into the fabric is also the fact that each week Suh faces what no other Heisman Trophy candidate must face: the double- and triple-teaming of opposing offensive linemen and linebackers, not to mention the razor-sharp focus of thirteen offensive coordinators. Even with the lack of "sexiness" a lineman brings to the table, the endless multiple-teaming may ultimately serve as proof positive why that bronze running-back-with-stiff-arm award seems forever destined for skill-position players.

Next to Suh, Michigan cornerback Charles Woodson's 1997 Heisman stats ring clear as a bell. However, if you watched the Big 12 Championship game, you undetstand the Ndamukong Effect--though you may well be unable to explain it to anyone who didn't watch it.

Put it this way. Each year the race usually hinges on a candidate's performance vaulting him into the lead and leaving his competitors in the dust. This is the first year that I can remember where one Heisman candidate literally destroyed another's campaign through his play. McCoy was an erratic 20-of-36 for 184 yards with zero touchdowns and three interceptions. Suh sacked McCoy 4 1/2 times and although he didn't actually pick off any of his passes, he gets three assists just by being on the field. The Suh Ledger from Saturday's game: 12 tackles, 7 tackles for loss, 4 1/2 sacks, 202 total yards allowed.

Okay, once more with feeling. 202 total yards allowed. 202 yards from a Texas Longhorn offense led by (until Saturday) the Heisman front-runner and two-time Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year. In his previous 12 games McCoy had completed 3100 of 432 passes for 3,328 yards and 27 touchdowns. That's more than 277 yards a game through the air alone. Add to that another 368 rushing yards (30.6 per game), and you'll see that McCoy alone accounts for nearly 310 yards of Longhonoffense per game.

With Suh leading the Nebraska defense, McCoy and his Longhorns gained just 202 yards of total offense all night.

At season's end, Suh leads the Huskers with 82 tackles, 23 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, 1 interception, 10 passes broken up, 24 quarterback hurries, 1 forced fumble, and 3 blocked kicks. To me, it's hard to justify a claim that McCoy is the best player in the nation when he wasn't close to being the best player on the field yesterday. Now many experts say that Suh is clearly the most outstanding college athlete in the nation. Hey, doesn't the plaque attached to the Heisman Trophy say the same thing?

As for who's going to win the hardware then... I say Mark Ingram. Oops, sorry. I meant to say FLINT'S OWN Mark Ingram.

Why Ingram? First, his THREE rushing touchdowns and 189 all-purpose yards against the top-ranked Florida Gators, the biggest performance of the season's biggest game. Second, his 1,542 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns, which led Alabama to a 13-0 season, the nation's #1 ranking and a berth in the BCS Championship Game. Lastly, most importantly and most astonishingly, the fact that no Crimson Tide player has ever won the Heisman Trophy before.

Think about that for a minute. The crimson and cream has brought college football such superstar names as Joe Namath, Ken Stabler, Don Hutson, Johnny Musso, Major Harris, David Palmer and Shawn Alexander, among others (and those "others" by the way include Lee Roy Jordan, Ozzie Newsome and Derrick Thomas, not to mention Steve Sloan, who quarterbacked the Tide to back-to-back national championships in the 1960s). Yet not one bust resides within the halls of the Downtown Athletic Club. No Alabama player has even finished runner-up (the closest was David Palmer's third-place finish in 1993, 'Bama's last national championship season).

Look for that trivia to be forever rectified Saturday night.