Heisman Finalists Announced: Johnny Manziel and the Other Guys, Manti Te'o and Collin Klein

It's official: Johnny Manziel, the leader in almost any credible Heisman survey you can find, will be making the trip to New York City. Manti Te'o and Collin Klein are just along for the ride. Or is there, perhaps, more to it than that?

No, if CBS Sports' long-running Heisman watcher is to be believed. In fact, just having three finalists invited this year -- the number can go as high as five -- makes perfect sense according to CBS. No one is even close to Manziel, Te'o and Klein among the potential nominees, and even Manziel and Te'o appear to have separated themselves from Klein.

But this is the Heisman. There are still some voters who might be hesitant about giving the award to a freshman, even if giving it to Te'o would go against the tradition that you almost have to either play on offense or be a return man to get consideration for the trophy. And for those who aren't comfortable with breaking either tradition, Klein's candidacy is at least not thoroughly laughable.

There is one quibble you could have with the finalist list, though we won't know until the votes are released whether the Heisman Trust had anything to do with this or not: Why is Jordan Lynch of Northern Illinois not getting an invitation? Listen, I'm not going to argue that a guy who plays in the MAC has faced the kind of competition that should get him the award, at least not this year, but a guy who's third in total offense behind Manziel and Baylor's Nick Florence and has over 1,300 yards more than Klein deserves an invite.

That's a far smaller outrage than would be presented by Manziel getting blanked in NYC, though. Let's hope we don't have to discuss that one Saturday night.