Stanford's Bryce Love Skipped Pac-12 Media Day For Class, And One Particular Media Member Thinks It May...(Squints Back At Article)...Cost Him The Heisman?!?

CBSSports- There was a hole in the college football universe when the Pac-12’s best player — and perhaps nation’s best as well — was a no show at media day.

Put it this way: Try to envision Tim Tebow in his heyday skipping SEC Media Days of because, well, school. Right or wrong, that wouldn’t have happened. The need to better himself, the conference and his school would have outstripped another summer school lecture.

​That’s essentially what kept Bryce Love back in Palo Alto.

“Me, personally, I really wanted to be there to represent the university,” Love said. “But I decided I just wasn’t able to make it happen this year. Based on other commitments, trying to graduate in December required me to take more classes over the summer.”

…Let’s just say Stanford forfeited a bit of a leverage [sic] to protest if Love doesn’t win the Heisman. Five different times Cardinal players have finished second in Heisman voting since 2009.

But at Stanford, they don’t necessarily chase trophies. That’s fine. too.It’s just that we thought we knew ya, Bryce. We wish we knew more. 

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I had to deduct points for a member of the media taking the "we have a job to do too!" mindset  to asinine lengths by acting like the slight inconvenience of him and his Pac-12 peers could have sabotaged the Heisman-worthiness of a season before it started, but I think Dennis Dodd more than made up for the self importance of his take with its originality. The whole premise of a student-athlete being villainized for prioritizing the requirements of the former over the latter in such a harmless way is nothing short of preposterous, but when's the last time you seen a college football player get criticized for being too appreciative of his education?

Usually those that get paid off their association with the NCAA are stuck making the argument that a complimentary curriculum is actually the ultimate form of payment to kids that put the health of both their bodies and their brains on the line for the institutions pocketing millions off their hard work. So while I, personally, wouldn't make the war on student-athletes into one of two fronts, I do have to tip my hat to the creativity required to turn their use of their own scholarship against them. 

Acting as if an end-of-season award based almost entirely on stats and merit could be withheld from a Stanford representative because he was too busy bettering himself to market his conference (at the cost of his only form of reimbursement, no less) is almost certainly a case of publishing abject stupidity for the sake of shares. To it's credit, however, it is unlike any stupidity I have ever read before. I know the top-end talent we're talking about here is Bryce Love, but - in spinning such an outlandish story out of an absent subject - Dennis Dodd ironically proved that he's good enough to do his self-important job without the preseason Heisman favorite present. Sigh, if only the rest of those invested in the Pac-12's profitability were as resourceful.