HEISMAN WATCH 2010: Locker Falls Under The Pressure As Reid Forrest Remains Undervalued

It was a perfect setup for Montlake's golden boy.  A highly ranked team coming to town and the eyes of the nation on him.  Perform well on that stage and he can coast on home towards the Heisman trophy. 

Things didn't exactly go as planned.  There was a great force standing in Jake Locker's way.  That force was not the Nebraska defense.  In fact, at the time of the game it was thousands of miles away.

I'm talking about Reid Forrest.

Locker came to UW with high expectations.  He was supposed to be the man to lead them back to the elite levels of college football, to perennial contention.  Through his first three years as a starter, that has yet to happen.  This season is supposed to be different, it is supposed to be the year Locker can "will" the team to victory. 

But how can he do this while living in the shadow of that immovable object to the east?  How can he expect to compete with WSU's Heisman Candidate, who may possibly be more deserving of the award than any college player ever, or to be more accurate, more deserving of this award than any person has ever been deserving of any award in the history of the universe? 

He can't.  No one can.  Jake Locker finally buckled under the pressure of the Reid Forrest Heisman campaign and we can now say without reservations that only one candidate remains up here in the state of Washington, and he wears crimson and gray.

While Jake Locker and many others are fully aware of the majesty of Reid Forrest, some of the national media's "experts" remain out of the loop.  From Ted Miller's Pac-10 blog yesterday, talking about Mel Kiper's top seniors:

Arizona State's Trevor Hankins is the No. 2 punter, while Washington State's Reid Forest is No. 5.

First of all, it's Reid FORREST, Ted.  There are two 'R's' in his name, because one 'R' could not handle the awesome.  This is an absolutely inexcusable mistake.  He is one of the greatest players in the history of college football, and you cannot spell his name?  I suspect this will be brought up in your yearly perfomance review with ESPN, so you better be ready to defend yourself.

Before I go on rest of my tirade here, I would like to thank the ESPN representative who pointed out to us the insider article that Ted Miller referenced.  That man advocated for Reid, undoubtedly demanding to see him in his proper place as number one on the OVERALL big board.  As another example of Mel Kiper's failures in talent evaluation, he ignored common sense and his staffers, while undervaluing the talents of Reid Forrest and pigeon-holing him into the "senior punter" category.

I'll ignore the fact that there is no way Reid Forrest is anything less than the best punter in the country, regardless of class and continue on to his omission from the "Big Board" altogether.  As we've clearly established on this website, Reid Forrest is a once-in-a-lifetime talent.  He is the best running back in the country, AND THAT'S NOT EVEN HIS PRIMARY POSITION.  He has freaking national monuments and parks named for him.  How did you miss that, Mel?  Is there an Andrew Luck National Park? No, and there never will be.

But maybe this is my fault.  I've yet to release the first set of REID and Awesomeness numbers for the 2010 season.  Partly because I've been refining the formulas to ensure they are the most accurate measurement of effectiveness and talent, and mostly because three games is not a large enough sample size.  If I published the numbers now, Forrest would be so far ahead, I might lose my credibilty as an objective observer and the stats themselves may lose support.  I have to, at the very least, give Reid a chance to regress so that others may catch up.

I may have to push up the date of the release of those numbers, before Reid Forrest loses any more ground.  Be on the look out for those, they should be on the site soon.  For now, we should be thankful that guys like Mel Kiper have no power over the Heisman Trophy.

REID FORREST FOR HEISMAN