Tim and Marshawn and standing in for greatness

This is an interesting time to be a Cal fan. Tim Leyden over at SI.com wrote an article about the new Harris Poll that's taking over for the AP in the BCS calculations, and the pic that goes with the article on the front page? Marshawn, charging for a TD. Lynch wasn't even a starter last year, even if every time he touched the ball be went to the house and back again (did I mention first touch=TD?). The article isn't about any team in particular, and Leyden got a picture of our boy from Oakland Tech (my local high school) as his cover shot?

So when other, more prominent schools have players who get used as the standard "college football player," I assumed that there was a strange groupthink going on, and it was clearly based on nothing much, because there are 119 I-A teams out there, each of which has 85 scholarships and most of which carry ~20 more players (the math says there are more than 10,000 major college football players in the country every year in Division I-A alone), so how do you pick a single player to represent the whole shebang? The answer is, of course, you let some other guy pick for you, or you pick a nice looking photo, or you pick a guy who wears colors you like or your lucky number.

And then, if enough people share that lucky number* or like those colors or even if enough people think that player is pretty good, he starts getting attention, and eventually, he gets the Heisman Trophy. Because if you don't know they exist, you can't vote for them. And if a guy like Tom Leyden says this guy is good enough to stand in for all of college football? He must be good enough to get a Heisman.

But this is all awfully strange for Cal fans, this groupthink that says our Marshawn is the epitome of college football. We all know he is the best thing since a picnic of sourdough, crab and zinfandel, but we figured everyone else in the country was eating hot dogs and drinking Bud. And we're having trouble responding appropriately, mostly because we have no idea how to do this whole success thing. We Cal fans are several generations of people who grew very good at losing, and winning is always much more complicated.

*Lynch, who has a 30 foot high picture of himself at the North Tunnel in Memorial Stadium, has changed his number from 24 — which he very nearly shared with Eric Zomalt, a free safety in the early 90s, and brother to my favorite player ever, Greg Zomalt, FB — to 10, so that his cousin can be 11 and his best friend 9. Last year, 10 was taken by Burl Toler's grandson, Burl Toler III (to whom Lynch threw a TD in the Stanfurd game, Toler's last). Leyden's picture is of Cal #24.