MaxwellPundit Award Winner: Colt Brennan

While we wait to hear if Colt will come back to UH or go to the NFL, let's appreciate him and all that he's done one more time! So without further ado, Colt Brennan is the winner of the 2006-2007 MaxwellPundit College Football Player of the Year Award. I think this is an award given out by a group of writers and bloggers, and they know their stuff. Here's an excerpt from Rakes of Mallow, an unofficial Notre Dame blog, which I believe hosted the competition, starting with quotes from some participating blogs.

Your 2006-2007 MaxwellPundit Award Winner...

1) Colt Brennan, The Island Gunslinger, Hawaii

"I included him in my last list for top-5. And he justified with a spectacular performance against ASU in the Hawaii bowl (passing for 559 yards and 5 TDs). His end of season numbers are just astonishing with over 5,500 yards (almost 10 yards per attempt, a mind boggling 72.6 percent completion, and 58 TDs (12 picks). As I mentioned before he put up these numbers against all kinds of competition including throwing for over 350 yards against a stingy Crimson Tide defense in Alabama. He belongs here. Clearly one of the best players in 2006-07 season." - BruinsNation

"Hawaii dominated its bowl game, as expected, but get this, Brennan had 559 (not a typo!) yards passing in the game. Oh, and five TDs to only one interception. He finished the season with the nation's best passing efficiency (a 72.63 completion percentage), 5,549 yards, and almost double (58 to 32) the number of touchdowns of his closest competition." - RockyTopTalk

"Yes, I know . . . it's just the system. Against Arizona State, though, the island gunslinger hooked up on 33 of his 42 tosses, tallying 559 yards through the air and having a five-to-one touchdowns-(plural)-to-interception-(singular) ratio. His Hawaii Bowl quarterback rating was 224.9; when it gets to 225, sell. Over the course of the regular season, Brennan piled up 4,990 yards and threw 53 touchdown passes, as opposed to just 11 picks, and those gaudy numbers were not the result of facing weak competition. Need proof? Against Alabama, Boise State, Nevada, Oregon State, Purdue, and San Jose State, Brennan threw for 2,394 yards, 21 touchdowns, and six interceptions." - DawgSports

"Mel Kiper says he's a "system" guy. Whatever, Mel. He still had - what - 80 touchdowns? Okay, 58. And he threw for five touchdowns against Boise State! They are a good football team, no? Brennan's numbers are inflated, yes, but when you're pretty much doubling up the rest of the field, this is more than just floating through the system. You're playing great, great football." - BurntOrangeNation

"That's a pretty good non-conference schedule, to say nothing of the cache torching Boise within a touchdown of its undefeated life holds now. But what's astounding about Brennan's numbers is that they're not just the result of throwing the ball a whole lot - he led the nation in completion percentage, yards per attempt, touchdown percent (attempts per touchdown) and voodoo passer rating, each of which is relative and has nothing to do with the number of times the ball is in the air. Even if it took 14 games against mostly WAC-ky secondaries, setting the single-season touchdown mark is pretty good; one player (Graham Harrell) got within twenty touchdowns, but no closer." - SMQ

If someone would have told me at the beginning of the season that only one quarterback made the final top five, you would have assumed that quarterback to be either Troy Smith or Brady Quinn, perhaps Brian Brohm, but we've got upset city. If I hear system quarterback from a WAC school as an argument against him one more time, I'm going to smash a ukulele over the opponent's head. At some point in time the system becomes an excuse, as you still have to make the reads and complete the passes, all at absurdly high rates. Stealing this from Kyle and SMQ, if you want to discount the stats against crappy WAC teams, go right ahead, but if that's the case, you need to erase the bottom half of all the other top quarterback's statistics and still look at the gap between Brennan and everyone else.

Including the two-touchdown, two-pick day against Oregon State, Brennan combined for 25 touchdowns and seven picks against Alabama, Boise State, Nevada, San Jose State, Purdue, Oregon State and Arizona State. If you just want to play the Calvin Johnson game and double those numbers instead of including the lighter fare on the Rainbow Warrior's schedule, that's still fifty touchdown passes and a completion percentage that never dipped below 68.8 percent.

Those are all really great comments about Colt and really great to hear! Congratulations to Colt once again, and thanks to the pundits for giving him this award.