Injury to Oregon's Dixon altered national landscape

Dennis Dixon's Heisman hopes are reeling after a knee injury took him out of Oregon's loss to Arizona on Thursday night. AP

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The cleats snagged, the knee gave, now Dennis Dixon is done. Oregon is a less interesting team, the Pac-10 a less interesting conference, college football is a less interesting sport today than it was yesterday. The Ducks senior quarterback was that transcendent this season.

Regarding his Heisman prospects, Dixon went from Hillary to Mike Gravel in the desert on Thursday night. What happened in Arizona Stadium after Dixon's injury early in Oregon's 34-24 loss to the unranked Wildcats made his case for the Heisman Trophy just as dramatically as his portfolio of mind-bending plays from a brilliant, truncated season.

The Heisman, that most irritatingly inexact of prizes, goes to the nation's "most outstanding" player. That elastic, opaque phrase has meant, down through the years, "Notre Dame quarterback having a pretty good season" and "best running back or quarterback on a team in the national title hunt." And it has served as an Irving Thalberg Lifetime Achievement Award (where you have gone, Eric Crouch?).

If the Heisman goes, as some feel it should, to the most valuable player on a national title contender, than Dixon earned it in absentia last night. Backup Brady Leaf proved several things in his excruciating stint as a long reliever:

• He's got grit. Hobbled by a bad ankle, absorbing one ferocious shot after another, Leaf continued to battle, throwing a multitude of errant passes, yes; but also leading the coyote ugly, 17-play scoring drive that brought the Ducks to within a touchdown with 4:30 remaining. (Kudos to the ESPN crew for nailing down a sideline interview with Ryan Leaf, whose trademark misanthropy was nowhere to be found as he covered his little brother's back, talking about how the kid was battling, and how proud he was of him.)

• Leaf, a drop-back passer whose mobility calls to mind the twilight years of George Blanda, is a miserable match with offensive coordinator Chip Kelly's free-wheeling spread option system.

• Wildcats corner Antoine Cason should probably win the Thorpe Award as the nation's best defensive back. That guy won't last long in the first round.

• For two-and-a-half months, until he left last night's game after collapsing without being touched, Dixon was the most valuable player on a national title contender. He won't win the Heisman now, but he deserves, at the least, a trip to New York.

Ripples from the latest upset in a season so crammed with them that, as I point out in this week's SI, the word has begun to lose its meaning:

• Tim Tebow, time to start giving serious reflection to what you'll say when your name is called at the Nokia Theater in Times Square on the second Saturday in December.

• USC, loser to Stanford and Oregon, welcome back to the race for the Pac-10 title!

• West Virginia, which declined to go in the tank following its Sept. 28 loss to South Florida, now stands to reap some serious dividends. The Ducks dispatched, the Mountaineers will bump up to No. 5 -- behind a trio of Big 12 teams who will soon be taking whacks at each other.

Dream scenario for Pat White, Steve Slaton, et al.: Missouri loses to Kansas State on Saturday. (Not likely, but not completely farfetched: Remember, the Tigers haven't won in Manhattan since 1989.) Mizzou rallies to knock off bitter rival Kansas in Arrowhead Stadium on Nov. 24 and Oklahoma a week later in the Big 12 title game, clearing a path to the No. 2 spot for the Mountaineers ... who won't be able to seize it, of course, unless they take care of business on Saturday in suddenly imposing (though still faintly ridiculous sounding) Nippert Stadium, lair of the Cincinnati Bearcats.

The fevered musings of the preceding passage are based on the presumption that LSU will win out, a shaky presumption this season.

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