Who will be the PS3 NCAA Football 09 cover athlete?
by 
On Tuesday I went over the top candidates for the Madden 09 cover. That, along with the PS3 cover of NCAA Football 09, are expected to be announced late next week. With the most obvious cover athlete candidate Darren McFadden already announced as exclusive to the 360 it opens up the opportunity for another high profile player to take the PS3 cover. EA Sports has stated that each cover will represent a different region so with McFadden the south is already taken. Lets look at the most likely candidates.
QBs: Matt Ryan (East), Brian Brohm (Central), Dennis Dixon & Colt Brennan (West)
RBs: Jonathan Stewart (West), Rashard Mendenhall (Central/North)
WRs: DeSean Jackson (West)
Defense: Chris Long (East), Glenn Dorsey (South)
In all likelihood EA will seek another highly recognizable name for the PS3 version. It, along with the 360 version, will by far get the most promotion. In contrast it wouldn’t surprise me if the PS2 cover went to a player from an FCS school. Dorsey can be eliminated due to his proximity to McFadden and EA’s statement that there will be different regions represented on each cover. DeSean Jackson has the best chance at wide receiver and provided excitement on the field but may not be a big enough name.
Look to Matt Ryan, Rashard Mendenhall, and Chris Long as the odds on favorites. They all come from different regions than McFadden and are expected to go in the top 15 of the draft. Mendenhall may be the least likely of the three given that they’ve already selected a running back for the 360 cover and they may want to differentiate between the two.
Generally it would be tough to justify putting a defensive player on the cover of NCAA Football. Only one has even made it and that was Charles Woodson in 1999. Most collegiate defensive players aren’t recognizable to the general public in the way that a QB or RB is. Chris Long has some more exposure though given his dad, Howie, is an NFL Hall of Famer and studio analyst on Fox.
If you go by the ghosted cover art that EA has on the game’s official website the player appears to be a QB. Now, the placeholder cover is usually not the silhouette of the eventual cover athlete. Interestingly though they do have a different one for each of the covers yet to be announced instead of just one generic silhouette. So for the sake of discussion I went through looking at different images of the QBs that may be considered for the cover. It looks as though the two that fit are Matt Ryan and Dennis Dixon, with strong leanings toward Ryan. I especially concentrated on the off-hand which is rather distinctive. Take a look at the two images of the players below. Others such as Brian Brohm and Colt Brennan don’t seem to match up.
So when it comes down to it the PS3 cover athlete will probably boil down to Matt Ryan vs Chris Long. Given the placeholder cover (which may be more than a coincidence here) and the prestige position he plays Ryan tops the list with Long the runner-up.
April 21, 2008 at 7:15 am
[quote comment="18177"]No one of those players was more the “HART” and sould of their team as hart was. And don’t look at one season, look at his body of work. Hart is more known then Mendenhall too[/quote]
Fine, you want to look at his entire body of work. During Hart’s tenure at Michigan, Michigan played 50 games. Hart was injured for 7 games and thus only played in 43 games. Anthony Thomas was the previous record holder at Michigan with 4472 yards. When starting all 4 years, you would need only 89.44 yards/game to tie Thomas. For Hart, he would need to average 104 yards/game because of the injuries. While it would take a good player to beat that, it would not necessarily mean that the player was anything special. It just means he did his job effectively. But now everyone is stating how special he is just because he started all 4 years. He’s not special for not having any competition at the position. Do you really think he’s better than say Tyrone Wheatley who had 327 less attempts than Hart but still had 6 more career touchdowns? Just because he has more “hart”. I hate to keep using Kevin Smith as an example, but Kevin Smith was much more than just the heart at UCF, he was basically the entire team. And in case you guys don’t follow UCF, he was just as much of a team leader as Hart, if not moreso. The only difference is that Hart played at Michigan.
But since I like to use stats to prove my point, here’s the ranking of total yards, yards/game, and yards/career carry total(stipulation of at least 1 rush per game, even if they have 0 yds) for all of those players who didn’t have the benefit of no competition at the position:
Smith* – 4679 yds – 129.97 yds/game – 5.2 yds/car. cry
Rice* – 4926 yds – 129.63 yds/game – 5.4 yds/car. cry
Hart – 5040 yds – 117.21 yds/game – 5.0 yds/car. cry
Slaton* – 3923 – 112.09 yds/game – 5.8 yds/car. cry
Charles* – 3328 yds – 87.58 yds/game – 6.2 yds/car. cry
Stewart* – 2891 yds – 80.31 yds/game – 5.6 yds/car. cry
Jones* – 2954 yds – 77.74 yds/game – 7.6 yds/car. cry
Mendenhall* – 2539 yds – 72.54 yds/game – 6.5 yds/car. cry
Johnson – 2982 yds – 62.13 yds/game – 4.8 yds/car. cry
* = Denote Junior status
It’s fairly easy to see which players started most of their career. And yet again, Hart is one of the worst at yards/career carry out of those players. So, it would be safe to assume that basically all of these players could’ve, at worst, done what Hart did. He is highly ranked in total yards and yards/game but that just proves my point that his stats are inflated by being a starter for 4 years when these other players with higher yds/carry numbers not starting until the sophomore or even junior years.
I’ve got nothing against Hart. I really do think he’s a very good player and it’s hard to argue otherwise. I’m willing to bet that he’s one of the toughest competitors in the draft but the reality is that he is being grossly overrated just because he was a 4 year starter at Michigan. There’s a reason he’s not projected to be drafted earlier than the 4th round and it’s because he’s not one of the best.
April 21, 2008 at 7:33 am
Oh, I just realized that with your comment about Hart being more known, that you were referring to him being on the cover. I completely agree. He is much more marketable than most if not all of those names and definitely deserves to be on one of the covers. The topic got off on a tangent somewhere earlier when someone was talking about who was the better player or something like that. But yeah, Hart on the cover sounds good to me.
April 21, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hey pasta, you’re going to the community event right? I know you’ve probably already thought of this, but could you list who they have as the top 25 teams?
April 21, 2008 at 10:03 am
[quote comment="18276"]Hey pasta, you’re going to the community event right? I know you’ve probably already thought of this, but could you list who they have as the top 25 teams?[/quote]
I’ll have a thread up for requests later today. But yeah that’ll be something I can easily grab. Also the toughest places to play.
April 21, 2008 at 4:21 pm
[quote comment="18030"][quote comment="18028"][quote comment="18024"][quote comment="18022"]What About Tebow.Heisman Winner.Duh[/quote]
Can’t, still in College. Probably be on 2010 or 2011, which year he goes pro.[/quote]
Then How Come they didn’t put Troy Smith on it Last year[/quote]
Because he isnt a big enough name and he went in the 4th round of the draft.[/quote]
He Was Drafted In The 6 Round Dummy
August 4, 2008 at 5:20 am
I dont dont know if its me but every body on my side line is fat