Mike Celizic

For the first time in the 72-year history of the Heisman Trophy, a sophomore is almost certainly going to win the most iconic and prized individual trophy in maybe all of sports. And if Florida quarterback Tim Tebow doesn’t leave Manhattan with the hardware, it will be a bigger shock than Chris Berman narrating a highlight reel without once sounding like someone is dropping ice cubes in his pants.

But just because the 20-year-old Tebow has finally broken the psychological barrier that had reserved the trophy almost exclusively to seniors with the occasional junior thrown in, don’t expect it to become a trend. Tebow, is no ordinary sophomore and this is no ordinary Heisman year.

If anything, rather than opening the door for sophomores in the future, Tebow’s expected victory only shows how difficult — bordering on impossible — it is for a sophomore to be a Heisman winner. For that to happen, you need a perfect storm of circumstances, and that’s what Tebow stepped into.

If everything had gone according to form — and we know how often that happens in sports —Tebow would be going to New York to sit in the front row and hear that he’d finished second. When this season started, we were told that Arkansas running back Darren McFadden was supposed to win the Heisman Trophy. He’d finished second the year before, the voters, for reasons known only to them, refused to take Hawaii quarterback Colt Brennan seriously, and there wasn’t anybody else considered up to the task of winning.

Unfortunately for McFadden, Heisman forecasts are like weather forecasts — what some guy in a $75 haircut says is supposed to happen often turns out to be vastly different from what actually does happen. Just last year, Notre Dame quarterback Brady Quinn was supposed to win it, but by season’s end, his stock was dropping faster than the housing market.

College football Two-man race with Tebow, McFadden

McFadden’s sin was the same as Quinn’s — he didn’t do what he had to do to win. McFadden had a better year than Quinn did last year, and it would have won if anyone other than Tebow came along. But he committed the unpardonable sin of having several games that were decidedly un-Heismanesque.

The rules aren’t complicated. If you’re a running back who wants to win, having a couple of incredible games, as McFadden did, is not good enough. You’ve got to get at least 100 yards — or darned close to it — per game.

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McFadden failed in that regard, collecting just 43 yards and averaging 2.5 yards per carry against Auburn, and compounding the sin by amassing 61 against Florida international and 88 against Mississippi State. In the latter two games, his yards-per-carry didn’t exceed 3.2. That’s far too pedestrian for a Heisman candidate.

Those performances created a vacuum and Tebow stepped into it. The kid was simply spectacular all season long, no less so in defeat than in victory. Along the way, he did something no one in the history of big-time college football had ever done — account for at least 20 touchdowns both passing and running — and that was the clincher.

Had Tebow simply had the passing year he had without the rushing totals, he would not be the Heisman winner. Just look at Brennan, Hawaii’s extraordinary passer. Last year, he threw for an astonishing 5,549 yards and 58 TDs in 14 games and wasn’t considered a serious candidate. This year, he piled up 4,174 yards and 38 touchdowns in 11 games and still isn’t considered to be any better than a third-place Heisman candidate.

And after Brennan, there aren’t really any candidates worthy of mention. This year’s field was, to borrow a line from Abraham Lincoln, thinner than a broth made from the shadow of a chicken that was dying of starvation.