Will Ohio State QB win award by largest margin ever?

	Troy Smith already took home the Davey O'Brien award as the nation's best quarterback. The Heisman is next. AP
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In a year in which he made throwing touchdown passes and winning football games look unusually easy, it's only fitting Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith will cruise to the 2006 Heisman Trophy in what has been the least competitive Heisman race in recent history.

The biggest cause for intrigue on Saturday night at the Nokia Theater in Times Square will be whether the Cleveland native achieves the most lopsided victory in the award's 72-year history.

As of Thursday, the Web site StiffArmTrophy.com, which has projected the Heisman voting totals with incredible accuracy the past four years, had solicited ballots from 111 actual voters. All but five gave their first-place vote to Smith. If that trend were to hold up over 892 ballots (the amount received last year), he would finish with 95.5 percent of the first-place votes, shattering Reggie Bush's record of 84.9 percent last year.

But here's the most amazing part: Smith could actually come within striking distance of O.J. Simpson's 1968 records for first-place votes (855) and margin between first and second (1,750 points) despite the fact there were nearly 300 more registered voters then (1,200) than there are now (924).

All this may come as a bit puzzling to some fans who, while acknowledging Smith's achievements this season, don't necessarily feel he's had one of the greatest seasons of all time, either. I don't necessarily disagree. The lopsided nature of his victory probably says more about the quality of the rest of the field (which took a severe hit when potential candidates Adrian Peterson and Michael Bush went down with season-ending injuries) than it does about Smith. But even if another legitimate candidate had emerged, I find it hard to believe he would have toppled the Ohio State quarterback, who did everything you could have asked him this season.

Statistically, Smith's pre-bowl numbers (67 percent completions, 2,507 yards, 30 touchdowns, five interceptions) were extremely similar to those of the last winning quarterback, USC's Matt Leinart in 2004 (67 percent, 2,990 yards, 28 TDs and 6 INTs), but stats aren't what will win him this award. Since the start of this decade, the Heisman has become almost exclusively the domain of players whose team played for the national championship (the lone exception: USC's Carson Palmer in 2002). As the quarterback of the nation's No. 1 team from start to finish who entered the season near the top of most Heisman watch lists, it would have been nearly impossible for anyone to dethrone him.

Every Heisman voter has his own set of criteria that he holds important. For me, the No. 1 point of emphasis is how a player performs in big games -- and Smith has proven himself over the course of his career to be an unflappable big-game player. Against then-No. 2 Texas on Sept. 9, he threw for 219 yards and two touchdowns in the first half, including a 29-yarder to Ted Ginn Jr. to give his team the lead just before intermission. Against then-No. 13 Iowa on Sept. 30, he torched the Hawkeyes for four touchdowns in a 38-17 rout. And in the Game of the Year against Michigan, the nation watched as he carved up the Wolverines' previously impregnable defense for 316 yards and four TDs.

About the only thing missing from those performances was a signature moment -- but I wouldn't hold it against him, either. The fact is, OSU was so dominant this season that its leader was never required to, say, throw a game-winning touchdown with two minutes left or rack up 500 yards just to survive. Smith's season felt more like one long, sustained highlight reel -- kind of like this one.