With Christian McCaffrey declaring for the draft last season, many thought Stanford had completely lost the little star power it had going into 2017.

Then Bryce Love came onto the scene.

The junior running back has come out of nowhere to become a strong candidate for this years Heisman trophy.

Unlike other Stanford players who have come close to winning the award, Love has emerged as a possible front runner for it.

Stanford’s last two major Heisman candidates, Andrew Luck and Christian McCaffrey, were great, yet overshadowed players, during their college careers.

Luck was always under the shadow of Robert Griffin III at Baylor, and two years ago, McCaffrey was constantly overshadowed by Alabama running back Derrick Henry.

This year however, a Stanford product has a real chance to win the award due to the fact that nobody seems to be running away with the national Heisman discussion.

In the 2015 season, McCaffrey came up just short of the award, even after breaking the season record for all-purpose yards previously held by Barry Sanders.

Derrick Henry would end up taking the award home that year, after breaking the SEC season rushing yards record, which is impressive, but not near the level of difficulty it took for McCaffrey to break his record.

In Love’s case, he’s putting up impressive numbers and actually getting noticed for it.

In the latest USA Today Heisman survey, Love placed just behind Penn State running back, Saquon Barkley, with 42 votes as opposed to Barkley’s 43, and tallied the same amount of first place votes as Barkley, with nine.

Barkely could pose a real threat to Love, simply because he plays in the much stronger Big 10, which many believe is among the best of the power five conferences.

However, when you have a running back who’s averaging 10.3 yards a carry, it’s hard to justify giving the award to someone else at this point.

So far, Love is averaging about 198 yards a game for a total of 1,387 rushing yards, which currently leads the nation.

Love has also has 11 touchdowns on the year, 10 of which were from 50 plus yards.

With Stanford having a fairly strong schedule ahead of them, including games against Washington State, Washington and Notre Dame, it gives Love more opportunities to prove himself to the Heisman committee.

Regardless of the outcome however, Cardinal fans should sit back, relax and enjoy Love’s amazing season while they still can.