Monday afternoon I opened my online Heisman Trophy ballot with no idea whose name I was going to put on top.

I wanted to type "Manti Te'o."

Instead I typed "Johnny Manziel."

It might have been the toughest Heisman decision I've had in my two decades as a voter. Either player would be a deserving winner. But you can only vote for one.

I wanted to vote for Te'o because I love everything about the guy: a senior with extraordinary leadership ability and charisma; a guy who has elevated his team to a new level of success; a defensive star in a sport that always favors the offensive stars; a young man with a heart-tugging backstory; and – this is important – a brilliant football player who has had a dominant season.

I would be quite happy to see him win Saturday night.

Yet in the end, after scrutinizing the statistics, I believe Manziel had the better season and deserved the vote. Barely.

The hardest part of this Heisman procedure was comparing a quarterback to a linebacker. There is no statistical commonality. It is very much apples for defense and oranges for offense.

But I tried to find a way, and here's what I came up with: I considered defensive turnovers forced to be the rough equivalent of offensive touchdowns scored. But since there are still more offensive touchdowns than turnovers forced, I broke it down to a percentage. Which player produced a higher percentage of his team's turnovers/touchdowns?

Te'o has seven interceptions and a fumble return this season. That's eight of Notre Dame's 23 takeaways, and that's a remarkable number. His percentage of Irish takeaways is .348.

Manziel has thrown for 24 touchdowns and run for 19. Texas A&M has scored 72 touchdowns. His percentage of the Aggies' TDs is .597. That's an even more remarkable number.

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Still, I wanted to make sure Manziel didn't just run up numbers against the three non-conference lightweights on the A&M schedule: SMU, South Carolina State and Sam Houston State. He had a hand in 16 of the Aggies' 23 touchdowns in those games (.696). But if you subtract those numbers from the season totals, Manziel still was a part of more than half of A&M's touchdowns (.551).

That's a pretty strong advantage for Johnny Football.

He also produced 4,600 of the Aggies' 6,628 yards of total offense (69.4 percent). And while it is easy to say that a quarterback is naturally in position to have a greater impact on a game than a linebacker, it's hard to have an impact as great as Manziel's. His 584 plays (running and passing) averages out to 49 per game – a huge load on one player's shoulders.

He handled that load spectacularly. Manziel was durable and dependable, the prime example of the rising impact of the dual-threat quarterback in an up-tempo offense. He's the embodiment of the modern, do-everything QB – and, yes, that guy is going to have an advantage when it comes to things like winning the Heisman.

Outside of individual stats, team success is obviously a major Heisman component, too. And you cannot do better than undefeated and ranked No. 1. But in terms of elevating a team from one year to the next, Manziel has equaled Te'o: Notre Dame has gone from eight regular-season victories in 2011 to 12 in 2012; A&M has gone from six regular-season victories in 2011 to 10 in 2012. That's a plus-four for both.

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