Heisman Data and charts

Although Sam Bradford has been confirmed as the 73rd heisman trophy winner, my dad and I wanted to see if he deserved the trophy based on raw data. First, lets show you are data table:

As you can see in the data, Bradford dominated in passing yards and total touchdowns, while Tebow and McCoy were about tied in rushing yards while Bradford was left in the dust in that category. McCoy's completion percentage is very noticeable and remarkable, but I don't think it has much of an impact. McCoy did make some great passes, but half of his completions came from short yardage/high pertcentage passes.

How does the data look on a chart? Unfortunately, as you can see below, an absolute comparison is hard to evaluate, because the passing yards number is hundreds of times larger than the other numbers.

To make the comparison clearer, we modified each variable. Instead of using absolute values, we decided to put the data in percentages. For example, Tebow's passing yards % is 56, because his 2515 yards are just over half of the maximum, Bradford's 4464. Take a look at Chart TDM1 ...

On this chart, The Heisman candidates were placed on the x-axis while performance percentages were put on the y-axis. Chart TDM2 differs because the 5 QB categories are placed on the x- axis instead of the heisman candidates. Which one do you think is easier?

In our opinion, TDM1 is an easier chart. However, we thought there was one more way to graph this data. Behold... TDM3!

The question to you is, Who should have won the Heisman? Chart TDM3 says Tebow. My dad and I still believe Bradford was the best choice this year. Chart 3 adds up each category as if they were equally important. We disagree. Passing yards and TDs are - we think - most important.

Next up: who will be the ultimate Heisman QB? Once we assemble all the data, we may even be able to tell which category mattered most to the voters.