Mike Celizic

Never ask before a college football season begins whether anyone or anything related to the game is being overhyped. The answer is as plain as the faces on Mount Rushmore. In college football, if it can’t be overhyped, it isn’t worth talking about.

No team has yet played a game, and yet all suspects are already ranked in polls based on the opinions of the rankers and not anything that’s happened on the field. We also already know who is going to win the mythical national championship and the Heisman Trophy.

According to the pundits, it’s Notre Dame in the first instance and the Fighting Irish quarterback, who in an odd quirk is actually of Irish descent, Brady Quinn, in the second.

The national champion-designate tag is a moot point, set out for discussion purposes only. All it means is that if the Irish win all their games, they should go to the BCS championship game, and if they don’t, whoever else is undefeated will take their place.

But the Heisman-in-waiting tag that’s been stapled to the back of Quinn’s jersey actually means something. In effect, he’s already been given the trophy, and if he plays as he did last year, it will be his to keep come December.

That’s something of a tall order, as he completed 65 percent of his passes for 3,919 yards and 32 touchdowns against just seven interceptions. But if he gets roughly the same numbers, he knows he wins. It’s that simple.

Unlike the national championship, which can be lost on an unlucky bounce or one spectacular play by the opposition, the Heisman can’t be lost to bad luck. Rather, it takes bad play or the great monkey wrench of sports, injury. Adrian Peterson, who at 7-2 is second on the betting charts this year, knows all about being stopped that way.

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Being listed at 7-2 is pretty good, but Quinn is 5-2. Last year, he finished fourth in the balloting and all three people ahead of him, winner Reggie Bush, Vince Young and Matt Leinart, the 2004 winner, have gone on to the pros. In golf, Quinn would be the leader in the clubhouse, and unless Peterson or the third betting favorite, Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith at 7-1, has the kind of year that goes down as one of the greatest ever, Quinn wins.

A lot of people will write about how much pressure that puts on the kid’s shoulders, and they’d be right. But which would you prefer, the pressure of being favored to win or the pressure of having to play catch-up? In other words, would you rather have a two-stroke lead on Tiger Woods going into the final round of a major or a two-stroke deficit? Either way there’s pressure, and only a fool would choose to be trailing instead of leading.

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Quinn doesn’t appear to be a fool, and if he is, he’s awfully good at hiding it. Thanks to his prickly and demanding coach, Charlie Weis, he’s also not likely to get carried away with the wonderfulness of his own press clippings.

Anyway, whatever pressure there is nationally on him pales in comparison to the pressure being applied on the Notre Dame campus, where he and Weis together are expected to end a run of 20 seasons without a national championship.

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