Mark May, Bite Me, Clausen for Heisman

Jimmy Clausen has the third best QB rating in the country.

He is sixth in the nation in passing yards.

He is going to dominate against Michigan State this week, Purdue next week and Washington on Oct. 3.

He has yet to throw an interception.

Matt Barkley may not even be around on Oct. 17 and Charlie Weis has two weeks to prepare for the Trojans.

ESPN's Mark May says Clausen has no chance because he lost to Michigan. Well Notre Dame-Michigan has been the best game of the season and may wind up being one of the five best for the whole year.

Michigan should have been ranked and would have been ranked if anyone had paid attention to Week One and not used their pre-season biases. Notre Dame demolished a Nevada team that May said would be Week One's upset special. So we know he's biased, partly because he plays Lou Holtz's foil on ESPN. May correctly predicted Notre Dame's demise two years ago, and it wasn't because of bias. He paid attention to the detail and he knew Notre Dame was incredibly overrated and vulnerable. But not this year. Stop the hating. If he watched Notre Dame have a luau at the expense of Hawaii in the bowl game last December he would have realized this is a different team. And he knows that Clausen has come of age and the team was not the rag doll from years before.

Notre Dame is a top 25 team right now. A top 15 team, maybe even a top 10 team. It will have to beat USC in front of a national audience to get anyone to pay attention.

Clausen by then will be on his way.

Take Two: Terrelle Pryor can't run a two-minute drill, no less win the Heisman. But I take back any remarks about Penn State's Daryll Clark. Even though his team is incredibly overrated, he has put the program on his back.

Take Three: Charlie Weis was absolutely right about the refereeing at Michigan. Penalizing Armando Allen for unsportsmanlike conduct after scoring the go-ahead touchdown was not just ludicrous but crucial. The 15-yard penalty assessed on the kickoff created a field position advantage for Michigan that eventually played itself out at the end of the game. (And no referee saw linebacker Jonas Mouton throw a punch at Eric Olsen. Weis did send videotape to Big Ten officials.) Notre Dame should insist on neutral referees from now on.

BTW, how come nobody saw Tate Forcier coming. This kid was unbelievable, especially on his TD scamper on fourth down when he said he just reacted to Cover 0 coverage and knew no one had the quarterback in that defense.

NCAA Quarterback Rating