The Heisman Trophy

Well, to the surprise of pretty much nobody the Heisman Trophy was awarded to Auburn's Cameron Newton tonight. It remains to be seen if the ongoing investigation surrounding his recruitment will allow him to keep it or not. For a family that to all outward appearances seems to be very close I just do not buy the idea that Cecil Newton was soliciting money from at least one university for his son to sign and 1) his son knew nothing about it 2) what would have cost one school $180,000 was given to another school free.
I want to make very clear that I have no evidence of any of the things I have already said or will say in the rest of this post, these are just the opinions of one guy that will probably be read by about 10 people at the most.
Going strictly be on-field performance I can find no fault with giving Newton the award, the kid had an amazing statistical season and lead an undefeated team to a berth in the national championship game. However, since sports do not exist in a vacuum I would not have voted for Cameron Newton. Like I said earlier, I do not buy the claim that he did not know anything about what went on with the pay-for-play scheme that was going on. So working from the stance that Newton knew about what was happening, he would have knowingly violated NCAA rules and therefore should have been ineligible to play. I feel that if Newton had been allowed to play all season and then yanked off the field just before the SEC championship game or the final regular season game against Alabama it very well could have lead to Auburn losing and the other players on the team who did nothing wrong would miss out on a chance to complete a dream season. Not allowing Newton to play would penalize a lot of innocent kids and that should not happen, BUT, the Heisman Trophy is an individual award and voting for another player would only penalize Cameron Newton who I believe was involved in the violation of NCAA rules. I think that withholding the ultimate individual award in college football would have been appropriate.