As nice of a ring as the name Ndamukong Suh winning the Heisman Trophy would have had to it, I found Mark Ingram’s winning the Heisman trophy on Saturday worthwhile for the speech alone.

After back to back years of high-profile Christian quarterbacks bringing their God talk to the nationally televised broadcast, the parts of Ingram’s acceptance speech when he wasn’t thanking God were for me far more influential and Christ-filled than any name dropping of the savior of the world could ever achieve.

First of all, he teared up almost as much as I did on my wedding day. Sure, it was kind of awkward watching the oddly-timed pauses in between tears, but it was also beautiful to see such raw emotion expressed from someone who plays a sport where toughness and acting like a muscle-headed, heartless jerk is so often the norm. His reaction was heartfelt and so vulnerably human.

Secondly, he thanked an intern. Did you even know there were interns in college football? I didn’t, but I do now, because Ingram showed enough humility to give credit to all of the people who have helped him this season. Ditto to his name dropping of the Alabama SIDs. Anyone who has ever worked in a sports information department or knows someone who has knows how hellish the hours and thankless the job can be.

Thirdly, his talk of relationships. I don’t know much about Ingram off the field, but when he talked about the relationships he had formed with the other Heisman trophy candidates and stressed their importance, I had a passing thought about some of the things Paul writes about the early church in the New Testament and a few more thoughts about how Jesus talks about how we should treat our enemies, or in this case, our competitors for the Heisman trophy.

The Heisman trophy is kind of silly. It’s basically a trophy given to the most popular offensive player on one of the teams computers and popularity polls have decided should get to play for a so-called national championship. Sorry, I had to fit that in somewhere.

But still, kudos to Ingram for bringing raw emotion and humility to an otherwise anti-climactic and drawn out television program (anyone count how many times Herbstreit said “in the trenches” when talking about Suh?). You can argue up and down why Toby Gerhart should have won it, but by all indications college football and Crimson Tide Nation are being represented well by the likes of Mr. Ingram.