On College Football: Former Heisman Winners Help Decide Who’s Next
On College Football
By MARC TRACY
The winner of the Heisman Trophy, to be announced Saturday night, will be decided above all by journalists. Of the 929 total votes, 870 were allotted to members of the news media, who are equally spread among six geographic regions like a gridiron electoral college. Anyone else could have voted online to help determine the ranking on a single public ballot, which consists of three spots, for first, second and third place.
But the suffrage is also extended to a special class of citizen, whose number during the voting window was 58: past Heisman winners. (Rashaan Salaam, who won the trophy in 1994 as a running back at Colorado, died on Monday, when the two-week voting period concluded.)
The honor is a rarity. Few if any former recipients of baseball’s Most Valuable Player or Rookie of the Year Awards have voted as past winners. An actress who wins the Academy Award may have a subsequent voice, but only alongside many other, non-Oscar-winning actresses.
Yet unusually, if not uniquely, the Heisman Trust, which administers the trophy, carves out a special space for those who, it could be argued, know best what it takes to be considered the college football season’s exemplary player, a collection of luminaries that includes Paul Hornung, Roger Staubach, Bo Jackson, Barry Sanders, Tim Tebow and Cam Newton.
“I like it, because you feel like you’ve got a stake in who the winner is — that winner’s going to be part of what we call a fraternity,” said Archie Griffin, the former Ohio State running back who is the only two-time Heisman winner. “You feel like you’ve got a teeny say-so.”
To answer a few questions: Yes, a Heisman winner’s vote counts the same as a media member’s. Winners who continue to play college football may vote, and may vote for themselves. Winners who are involved in college sports as team administrators or coaches may vote, and may vote for their own players. And no, Griffin does not get to vote twice. “I should lobby for the two,” he joked.
Reggie Bush, who won the 2005 award but returned it after the N.C.A.A. found that his family had accepted cash and other gifts from an agent while he was still a college player, has lost his vote. But O. J. Simpson, another Heisman-winning Southern California running back, whose subsequent ignominy had nothing to do with violations of amateurism, still has his.
“Anybody who has a vote should take it seriously and exercise it in the manner past winners have,” said Andre Ware, who won in 1989 as Houston’s quarterback and is now a college football commentator on ESPN. “The majority of us pay close attention.”
The five finalists making the trip to New York this year for the ceremony are mostly underclassmen: the Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson, a sophomore; the Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield, a redshirt junior; the Michigan linebacker Jabrill Peppers, a junior; the Clemson quarterback Deshaun Watson, a junior who was also a finalist last year; and the Oklahoma wide receiver Dede Westbrook, a senior.
Jackson is heavily favored to win, having rushed for more touchdowns (21) than all but four players in the Football Bowl Subdivision while passing for nearly 3,400 yards and throwing 30 touchdowns against nine interceptions. A hallmark of many successful Heisman campaigns is a signature early-season game, and Jackson has one in the Cardinals’ 63-20 September stomping of Florida State, in which he passed for one touchdown and rushed for four more.
But while some oddsmakers had once pegged him as a 1-to-30 shoo-in, he closed on Nov. 30 at a much lower (though still favorable) 1-to-3 at the Wynn Las Vegas, which, along with other Nevada bookmakers, was able to take Heisman bets for the second year in a row.
Jackson’s problem is that the Cardinals faltered down the stretch, losing their last two games and dropping from No. 3 to No. 15. Of the last 16 Heisman winners (including Bush), 13 were to play or had played in a national championship game. Louisville is headed to the second-tier Citrus Bowl this year.
Still, at least one voter remained pretty sure Jackson would win: Johnny Lujack, the oldest living Heisman winner, who was honored as Notre Dame’s quarterback after the Fighting Irish’s 1947 national championship campaign.
“He’s an outstanding player,” said Lujack, 91, who said he had missed the vote only once in his eligible years. “I don’t know whom I’m going to vote for on my second and third.”
Ware was more hesitant.
“I’m always looking for defensive players and if can they keep the current pace,” he said. “I think the year Charles Woodson won it. I voted for Charles Woodson.”
Indeed, Michigan’s Peppers, an exceptional athlete expected to turn pro next year, presents a novelty as the first primarily defensive player to make the final cut since Notre Dame’s Manti Te’o in 2012. Peppers would be the first defensive player to win the Heisman since Woodson, also from Michigan, did in 1997.
Mayfield and Westbrook are just the sixth pair of teammates to be invited to the Heisman ceremony as finalists. The last three times teammates attended the ceremony, one of them won. Unfortunately for these Sooners, their coach, Bob Stoops, does not have a vote.
“I always voted for one of my guys,” said Steve Spurrier, the former Florida and South Carolina coach and 1966 Heisman winner. “Maybe not first. If I had a special player that I thought deserved the vote, I put him in there.”
That included Rex Grossman in 2001, Spurrier said, when the Gators quarterback was the runner-up to Tim Crouch of Nebraska.
“If we hadn’t lost our last game, 34-32, to Tennessee, he probably or could have won it,” Spurrier said of Grossman.
Dave Campbell, the dean of Texas football writing and the sectional representative for the Southwest region of Heisman voters, seemed to shrug when asked how he felt about players’ having their say alongside the journalists who make up the bulk of the Heisman franchise.
“They might know more than these sportswriters do about the trials and tribulations they faced themselves in winning the Heisman,” he said. “It’s fine with me if they vote.”
Spurrier was more adamant.
“If a sportswriter in Topeka, Kan., can vote,” he said, “a former winner should be able to vote.”
Published at Fri, 09 Dec 2016 17:39:24 +0000
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