Hlas column: Newton's eligible, so he's my Heis-Man

Usually, voting for the Heisman Trophy is something I do without much wavering.

For one thing, it's a silly award usually won by the wrong player. For another, I figure if I can vote for a president, governor, or “Dancing With the Stars” contestant, picking one football player over another isn't too taxing.

But this year, I'm torn. I want to put two different quarterbacks on the No. 1 spot on my ballot. They are Stanford's Andrew Luck and Auburn's Cam Newton.

Statistically, the two weren't really far apart entering Saturday's SEC title game. In his first 12 games, Newton passed for 2,254 yards and rushed for 1,336. That's 3,590 yards of total offense. In 12 games, Luck passed for 3,051 yards and rushed for 438, for a total of 3,489.

Auburn is 13-0, Stanford 11-1. But Auburn didn't have to play at Oregon.

These are two special talents who have been genuine winners on the field. Here's why I'd like to vote for Luck:

“He's the anticelebrity quarterback,” Stanford Coach Jim Harbaugh told the New York Times before this season. “He's got a beautiful blend of confidence and humility.”

Luck had a 3.55 grade-point average at a great university entering the fall semester. His major is architectural design, with a heavy emphasis on math and science, engineering and designing.

That's got nothing to do with football, I know. But it makes Luck the kind of college sports star we're supposed to love, right? A true-blue student-athlete, someone who could have glided through college knowing NFL mega-money awaits him, but instead chose to get the most out of his Stanford opportunity.

“He has the utmost integrity,” Harbaugh said this week. “If I had to bet my life on a guy in terms of his integrity, it'd be Andrew Luck. There's no finer young man I've been around.”

And by the way, sophomore Luck may be the best NFL quarterback prospect of the last decade.

But I want to vote for Newton, too. I think Newton winning the Heisman will make quite a statement about major-college sports.

The NCAA recognized that Newton's father, Cecil Newton, used someone with ties to an agent to ask for money from Mississippi State in exchange to have his son play there. Newton, however, ended up going to Auburn. So Cecil Newton tried to shake a money tree at Mississippi State, but his son ended up going to Auburn for the mere cost of an athletic scholarship?

Sure. That's perfectly logical.

Look, none of us know if Cam Newton knew nothing or everything about what others were up to in shopping him around. But we do know it sure served Auburn and the SEC well to have Newton eligible for Saturday's SEC title game to lift the Tigers into the BCS championship game instead of non-BCS conference team TCU.

None other than Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany offered this:

“What I would say on any third-party issue is that the analysis in my view, whether you're an assistant coach, president or a booster or a parent, is that there ought to be accountability. There ought to be consequences.

“Here, who is closer to a player than the parent? If that person is found to be shopping that player, I think the rule-of-agency principle could easily apply. I would argue in the environment we're in that it should apply.”

Nope. Not this time. At least not until Auburn had its chance to play for a national-title.

Back to the Heisman ballot. I don't consider myself overly concerned with the morals of others and am suspicious of those who are. If it turns out Cam Newton was in any way a participant in the attempted selling of his services, it just means the kid understood what someone of his talent was worth to a college football program and wanted to get his slice of the action. I hope he's been an innocent among the wolves.

The NCAA and all the high-and-mighties in college athletics insist the shopping of a player to a school isn't right. The real world would snicker.

I'm voting for Newton with the No. 1 slot on my ballot because he has had an incredible season, and his performance Saturday against South Carolina only added to it.

If the Heisman Trust people have reason to take their trophy back from him later, that's their problem.