They couldn’t even let us have this

We now go live to the announcement of the 2016 Heisman Trophy finalists!

Here’s the thing.

I think we had all resigned ourselves by now to the fact that D.J. Pumphrey was not going to win the Heisman Trophy. Despite the monster numbers, the assault on the all-time rushing mark and the bigass banner hanging on the west end of campus, #Pumphrey4Heisman was always a bit of a Potemkin village. We all saw what happened to Marshall.

But I think we held out hope that D.J. could at least make it to New York – to get a free chicken dinner, a memory to last a lifetime and a nice photo op for both him and San Diego State University.

Wellllll, guess what? The Lords of College Football couldn’t even let us have that.

So Pumphrey, who has 2,018 yards rushing for a 10-win champion, and needs a mere 11 more in the bowl game to win the FBS rushing title, is not Finalist material apparently.

Pick two dudes from Oklahoma’s passing offense though, by all means. Hell, why not three, right??

The worst thing about college football is how, if you root for a Group of Five school, you get reminded in a million tiny ways every single week that the team you root for does not matter at all.

• Even if your team goes undefeated, it has no shot at the playoff and we all know it. It will be relegated to the Access Bowl, the tasty table scrap that the Power Five was nice enough not to feed to the dog. Unless … unless we are the dog? Aw shit.
• The announcers on your nationally televised game, no matter how big a game for your school, will spend half the telecast talking about the big tilt earlier between Power Five State and TV Contract A&M.
• And even when it comes to stupid, meaningless awards, being obviously one of the Top 5 college players in the nation isn’t enough to get a damn sniff.

God, college football is just the worst.

Anyway, thank you for an amazing season, D.J. You have won the Heisman Trophy in our hearts, which I’m sure means more to you that the actual Heisman. I would offer to crowdsource a trip to New York for you, but I’m pretty sure that would be an NCAA infraction.

So what can we do?