The Biletnikoff Award is given annually to the best wide receiver in college football. Justin Blackmon of Oklahoma State won the honor last season and he’s been announced as a finalist this year as well. Interestingly enough, so has another receiver in Oklahoma: Ryan Broyles.
Certainly Broyles deserves an honor of some sort given his career numbers as the all-time leading receptions leader in college football history (FBS). However, Broyles is going to end up missing three games by season’s end and that leaves out one particular person who deserves the honor: Baylor’s Kendall Wright.
There are three finalists for the award: Broyles, Blackmon and USC’s Robert Woods. That leaves Wright out in the cold even though he’s put up major numbers in Baylor’s biggest games (going over 200 yards against both Oklahoma and Kansas State). While everyone deserves the acclaim, Broyles injury creates a possible point of contention — do you honor the guy with career numbers or the guy who deserves it with the better year? Injuries happen and that’s a part of football.
This feels akin to giving Martin Scorsese a Best Director win for The Departed after years of not winning for more deserving films. The Departed was a very fine feature, but it’s debatable whether or not it was the year’s best (certainly it’s not Scorsese’s best). Sometimes the right thing to do is to honor the guy for the career numbers and leave a guy like Wright hanging. And that’s apparently how the voters felt in this regard.