The Heisman Trophy

ESPN’S TELECAST CUT back to the field, where at the center of Stanford’s celebration following its 45–16 drubbing of No. 5 Iowa in the 2016 Rose Bowl, reporter Maria Taylor awaited Cardinal running back Christian McCaffrey. A fan with an agenda was also present, attempting to get in on the conversation.

“How aware were you of your production throughout the game?” Taylor asked McCaffrey, while the fan—a man wearing a Stanford hat and shirt—positioned himself squarely behind player and media member, so that he was in full view of the camera.

“Not at all, really,” McCaffrey replied. “When you’re playing, the game goes by so fast and you just focus on the next play.

“And I think that’s why our team is successful,” he continued, “because we’re not worried about what’s happening in the now. We’re worried about the next play and what we can do to help the team be successful.”

As McCaffrey got near the end of that answer, the fan fidgeted. He held up his index finger, and for a brief moment, looked as though he had lost his nerve. His mouth opened as if he was going to yell something, and maybe thought better of it.

His stat line was staggering. McCaffrey scored a 75-yard touchdown on the first play from scrimmage in racking up 139 all-purpose yards in the first quarter alone, and 48 seconds into the second quarter, he ripped off a 63-yard punt return for a score.

It was arguably the masterpiece of what had been a record-breaking sophomore season. In all, McCaffrey ran for 172 yards on 18 carries (9.6 per carry), had 4 receptions for 105 yards (98 of which came after the catch) and a score and another 91 yards on returns. Those 368 all-purpose yards smashed the old Rose Bowl mark of 346 by Wisconsin wide receiver Jared Abbrederis in the 2012 edition against Oregon, and were the fourth-highest total in any bowl game.

Nearly a month before at the Heisman Trophy ceremony, McCaffrey was already the single-season all-purpose yardage king. He had ripped that record away from 1988 winner Barry Sanders when the Stanford running back amassed 461 yards against USC—the fifth highest single game total in history—in the Pac-12 Championship Game. That exploitation of the Hawkeyes defense simply pushed his yardage to 3,864, which was 614 more than that of Sanders, and still 338 ahead if you count Oklahoma State’s bowl game, which in ’88 the NCAA didn’t add to season statistics.

Second in the voting to Alabama’s Derrick Henry at 293 points back, this stood as a statement in every sense of the word—even if the Stanford back didn’t want to be the one to verbally deliver it.

But then it happened. He held both of his hands to his mouth and blurted it out.

He wasn’t done. Taylor asked McCaffrey about the Cardinal’s focus going into the game, and the man, becoming emboldened and amused with himself as he smiled at the crowd of media that was gathering, shouted it twice.

When the topic turned to motivation of finishing behind Henry in the Heisman race, the man took a shot at the winner, referencing his yardage in eventual national champion Alabama’s 38–0 rout of Michigan State in the Cotton Bowl the day before, and was sure to put McCaffrey’s historical season into context.

McCaffrey, who made it seem as if he was unaware of the fan’s antics, smiled at the Sanders comment. Then, the fan tapped into the thinking of many who watched this piece of history unfold.

Obnoxious as he may have been—and WWE icon “Stone Cold” Steve Austin may have summed up social media’s reaction when he tweeted, “Would someone from ESPN shut the dipshit up while Christian McCaffrey does a postgame interview?”—he brought up a point that remains one of the more perplexing ones when it comes to the Heisman Trophy.

For much of the award’s history, it made sense. While the NCAA began keeping stats in 1937, there were few bowls, and the reporting on figures from those games was sketchy. The games just didn’t matter, basically standing as exhibitions. Until 1968—with the exception of 1965—the Associated Press crowned its national champion at the end of the regular season.

The bowls now had a direct impact on the course of the season, but the Heisman still had its reason for sticking to its normal timetable. Statistics accrued in the postseason were not included in yearly totals, meaning Iowa’s Chuck Long throwing for a then-record 6 touchdown passes in the 1984 Freedom Bowl (that mark was pushed to 7 in 2014 by Central Michigan’s Cooper Rush), Sanders’s aforementioned yardage in the ’88 Holiday Bowl, or Ty Detmer’s 594 yards in the ’89 edition of that game (a record that still stands) shouldn’t be factors.

But that changed in 2002 when, based on a survey of Division I, II, and III sports information directors, the NCAA opted to begin including those postseason stats as part of the season totals. It wasn’t a vast majority, though, as according to the governing body, Division I-A—the sub sector that accounts for the major programs—sports information directors voted 42–37 in favor, but the question was posed to just 79 of the 117 Division I-A schools.

The decision wasn’t retroactive, though, meaning no one would be going back and including those pre-2002 performances. As Jim Wright, the NCAA’s director of statistics, told The Oklahoman in 2011 regarding that decision, when another of Sanders’s records, 39 touchdowns in a season, was being challenged, and would ultimately be tied by Wisconsin’s Montee Ball, “We did not have the resources to, literally, recreate every bowl game with complete stats and play-by-plays that would allow us to see what additional records would be impacted.”

Whether or not you buy that argument, the fact of the matter is that bowls matter in every facet of college football—except when it comes to the Heisman. Still, as Heisman Trust president William J. Dockery said, there are no plans among the nine-person committee to force the award to alter course.

“People suggest it. People criticize … you’re going to be criticized no matter what you do,” he said. “No, the award traditionally has been for the outstanding college football player during the season. So with the playoffs, there have been suggestions that it should be changed, but I think virtually everyone is happy with the way it works presently.

“Otherwise you’re talking about one game or two games, rather than a season dictating [the winner].”

Which brings us back to McCaffrey and his hype man—no, not the fan, but rather Stanford coach David Shaw.

“I think he was the best player in America before this game, so I think it’s just the icing on the cake for us,” Shaw said in the postgame press conference. “I do think it’s a shame that a lot of people didn’t get a chance to see him during the course of the year. Apparently the games were too late.

“But the bottom line for me is his heart, and his determination is evident in every single practice and every single game. Christian, I told him at the Heisman ceremony and I told him again not too long after that, we need him to lead, and he’s leading by example and showing guys how to work and push themselves because that’s what great players do.”

Likely to Shaw’s dismay, many still didn’t tune in to see McCaffrey and the Cardinal, with the Rose Bowl drawing a 7.9 television rating, the lowest on record for the event since 1983. But it was still an all-time performance in one of sports’ marquee events against a team that, up until the final week of the regular season, was making a case for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

McCaffrey’s record day—along with the outings of the other two players who joined him in the Heisman ceremony—certainly could have made the vote even more interesting.

The stage on which he picked to deliver it could have been better, but the obnoxious Stanford fan was right: Henry was limited to 75 yards against Michigan State, though he had two touchdowns, and followed that with 158 yards and 3 scores on 36 attempts—putting him over 2,000 yards on the season—against Clemson in the national championship game.

Opposite Henry was Tigers quarterback Deshaun Watson, who, after throwing for 187 yards and running for a season-high 147 against Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, threw for 405 yards and 4 scores to go along with 73 rushing yards vs. the Crimson Tide.

The 478 total yards bested Vince Young’s 467 in 2005 for the most in a title game.

Those yards through the air were the third-most that one of Nick Saban’s Alabama defenses had ever given up, and he became the first quarterback in Division I history with 4,000 yards passing and 1,000 yards rushing in a season.

Texas’s Vince Young, the 2005 runner-up, had 467 total yards in beating USC in the national title game, but would it have been enough to supplant runaway Heisman winner Reggie Bush?
(frankielon/Flickr)

We could have had history vs. history vs. a 2,200-yard rusher for the Heisman. Ultimately, Henry may have still won out as the backbone of Alabama’s title run, even if some had walked away believing that he had been individually upstaged by Watson.

But while that race could have been further amplified by including bowl games, there is an inherent risk involved: eliciting knee-jerk reactions.

Young was sensational in giving Texas the 2005 national title, the lasting image coming on the final play, facing fourth and five, as the quarterback scrambled untouched for an 8-yard touchdown with 19 seconds remaining. The Longhorns had taken down seemingly unbeatable USC and its Heisman winners, Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart.

It certainly could have saved the Heisman Trust the trouble of vacating that year’s trophy, but it would have been wrong.

Bush was the most electrifying player of that season, and he was every bit as Heisman-worthy against Texas with 279 total yards, with 82 rushing, 95 receiving, and 102 on kick returns. Young delivered a transcendent performance, but he had received just 79 first-place votes to Bush’s 784, and while the margin of victory may have become smaller, to think that he could have made up that kind of ground had the voting come a month later may be unrealistic.

Revisionist history does have its place, though. There are instances prior to 1968—that year when bowls started to truly hold significance in the national landscape—where the trophy could have changed hands if the postseason was taken into consideration, namely 1964, when Tulsa’s Jerry Rhome could have supplanted winner John Huarte of Notre Dame, who didn’t play in a bowl, while Rhome led the Golden Hurricane to a victory over Ole Miss, and ’67, as O. J. Simpson lost the award to UCLA’s Gary Beban, but burned Indiana for 128 yards and 2 touchdowns on 25 carries in USC’s Rose Bowl win (Beban—who threw just 8 touchdowns on the season, along with 8 interceptions—and the Bruins weren’t part of that postseason).

But the years since the AP’s inclusion of bowls have seen ten occasions where a delay in voting may have made a difference, and it could have helped to settle one of the most contentious finishes the Heisman has ever seen.

NOTE: Missing from those races that could have changed: 1980. While Herschel Walker was again spectacular in rushing for 150 yards and 2 touchdowns in a win over Notre Dame that gave Georgia a national title, and George Rogers was held in check in South Carolina’s loss to Pitt and fumbled twice, nothing about the voters of the time tell us they would have been any more interested in voting for a freshman. Plus, Rogers did finish with 113 yards, so it wasn’t as if he was entirely a non-factor.

He was the NCAA career record holder with 4,715 yards, capped it off with a national-best 1,881 yards in his final season, and would go on to win UPI Player of the Year.

Yet, Cornell tailback Ed Marinaro would lose the Heisman by 152 points to Auburn quarterback Pat Sullivan, and when he appeared on a pre-taped ABC Sports special that aired three days after the announcement, he didn’t hide his resentment.

Sullivan’s classmates took a step to make him feel better, with a second-place trophy displayed at J&M Bookstore on the Auburn campus for several weeks, including a plaque that read:

Three days after receiving the Heisman, Sullivan had his worst game of the season, as the fifth-ranked Tigers fell 31–7 to No. 3 Alabama, a loss in which the quarterback threw for a season-low 121 yards on 14 of 27 passing with 2 interceptions. It was following that loss that ABC aired Marinaro’s remarks.

“As for that show on nationwide television after the Alabama-Auburn game … I had the opportunity to express myself in that I had come in second in the balloting,” Marinaro told the Associated Press in April 1982. “But there’s no way I could have known that Pat and Auburn were going to lose and he couldn’t have an outstanding day. I felt sorry for Pat the way that turned out.”

Cornell didn’t reach the postseason in ’71, but sitting at home could have simply strengthened Marinaro’s case, as Sullivan followed that forgettable outing against the Crimson Tide with another opposite No. 2 Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl.

Sullivan passed for 250 yards in a 40–22 loss, with 1 touchdown and an interception, and that lone score came with the Sooners up 40–14. Meanwhile, he was also upstaged by Oklahoma QB Jack Mildren, who after coming in sixth in the voting, had 30 rushes for 149 yards and 3 touchdowns and was named game MVP.

Mildren would have certainly seen a spike coming off that performance, and Sooners running back Greg Pruitt (95 yards and a touchdown) may have made a charge up from third in the voting, but Marinaro was positioned to take full advantage of Sullivan’s missteps after he was given the award. He took three regions (East, Midwest, and Far West) to Sullivan’s victories in the South and Southwest, and even if voters would have overlooked the Tigers quarterback’s last two games, he was going to have even more difficulty taking the Southwest, where he had to contend with Pruitt and Mildren.

All that being said, there was one huge factor in the Heisman finish that Marinaro has gone back to that could have kept him from winning, regardless of what else transpired.

“I think it’s legitimate to think that the Ivy League cost me the Heisman,” he told the AP. “You can’t tell me that any other player who set 12 NCAA records wouldn’t have won it if he played somewhere else.”

As detailed in previous chapters, Ty Detmer’s setbacks after winning the trophy—hours after against Hawaii, in that season’s bowl game vs. Texas A&M, and in three losses against ranked opponents to start his follow-up campaign—took the luster off his victory, and are arguably, years later, making it that much more difficult for contenders from outside the major conferences.

That’s not all on Detmer, but had it been Notre Dame’s Raghib “Rocket” Ismail that won instead, would it have changed the perception of candidates from smaller schools in the future?

The runner-up by 305 points, Ismail largely defined that season’s Orange Bowl with what might have gone down as the Heisman Moment That Never Counted.

With 1:05 to go and Colorado up 10–9, Ismail fielded the punt at the 9-yard line and cut up the middle of the field, breaking through a group of four Buffaloes that converged on him, including Chad Brown, the linebacker rushing in from the All-American’s left side. He made contact, but couldn’t wrap Ismail up. As the Rocket broke toward the right sideline, Tim James—whose job was to provide outside containment—made a run at Ismail, falling forward as he reached out with both hands. But James came up empty, and Ismail outran both Colorado punter Tom Rouen and Ron Bradford—the latter had an angle on the return man, but he couldn’t match his speed.

Ninety-one yards later, Ismail strolled into the back of the end zone and took a knee as if in prayer or exhaustion and was joined by teammate Rod Smith. The Irish defensive back pulled Ismail to his feet and hugged him, and a moment later, Ricky Waters jumped on them both, knocking them back to the ground. The three lay there celebrating, then slowly rose as the public address announcer boomed.

“I remember taking that hit [from Brown] and thinking, Hey, I’m still on my feet, just get outside,” Ismail told Sports Illustrated in January 1991. “When I heard them announcing a penalty, I thought maybe it was defensive holding. Then I thought, Yeah, right.”

When James made his move toward Ismail, Notre Dame’s Greg Davis hit him on the side, a clip that—while not blatant—would wind up costing Ismail and the Irish.

“I saw Rocket stumble, and I blocked him,” Davis told the New York Times. “If he came through the hole clean, I wouldn’t have had to block him.”

The Buffaloes would hold on 10–9, and were left as split national champions, losing the UPI crown to Georgia Tech by a single point, while they won the AP title.

Running back Eric Bieniemy led all rushers in that Orange Bowl victory, but he had just 89 yards rushing and another 19 receiving. Finishing a distant third in that year’s Heisman voting—he was 684 points behind Detmer and trailed Ismail by 379—it’s difficult to believe he could have won. But Ismail?

Primarily a wide receiver with 33 catches for 699 yards and 2 scores, his true impact was in his all-around efforts, as he also ran for 537 yards and 3 touchdowns on 67 carries, returned 14 kicks for 336 yards and a score, and had 13 punt returns for 151 yards. He touched the ball 127 times in all and averaged 13.56 yards per carry.

Rocket managed 6 catches for 57 yards and ran 3 times for minus-1 yard in Miami, but don’t think that the punt return against Colorado—nullified or not—along with the lure of his playing for Notre Dame wouldn’t have won out after Detmer’s setbacks.

Alabama had faced its share of Heisman winners before. It had seen Tim Brown (1987), Bo Jackson (’85), Doug Flutie (’84), Pat Sullivan (’71), and Frank Sinkwich (’42), but none of those meetings came with the player having already claimed the trophy.

Miami’s Gino Torretta was the first, and in a clash of the nation’s top two teams at the Sugar Bowl in 1993, the second-ranked Crimson Tide proceeded to make him look anything but outstanding.

“I knew they were good,” Torretta said after a 34–13 loss that would be the Hurricanes’ first game without an offensive touchdown in seven seasons and their worst loss in five years.

On the first play of the second half, Alabama cornerback Tommy Johnson picked off Torretta’s offering and set up a short touchdown run by Derrick Lassic. After the ensuing kickoff, Torretta threw a first-down interception, this time snagged by George Teague, who ran it back 31 yards for another score.

“We faked blitzes and dropped two and three deep,” Johnson told reporters. “I think we got into Torretta’s head.”

Torretta threw 3 picks in all—his second 3-interception outing over the course of three games, the last coming November 11 against No. 6 Syracuse—and completed just 42.8 percent of his passes (24 of 56).

“Gino did not play his best football game of the year. That’s obvious,” Miami coach Dennis Erickson said after the loss. “He made a couple of bad decisions. Those two scores were obviously the turning point.”

Torretta being the choice of Heisman voters has always seemed to be a case of awarding him for Miami’s dominance over his entire career. He was, after all, 26–1 as a starter before the Sugar Bowl, and already had two national titles on his résumé. In fact, he would remain the only two-time champ and Heisman winner until Matt Leinart, and later Tim Tebow, matched him, but his numbers were never all that flashy.

Torretta’s 3,070 yards at the time of voting were sixth in Division I-A, and he was tied for tenth with 19 touchdowns. Houston’s Jimmy Klingler claimed both of those statistical crowns, throwing for 758 more yards than the Hurricanes quarterback and 13 more scores. The only major national category in which Torretta finished higher than fifth was in total yards per play, at 6.98, which was tied for third.

He won as a leader, but if he was receiving the credit for Miami’s successes, could he have taken the trophy after falling flat in the Sugar Bowl? Torretta still might have finished higher than runner-up Marshall Faulk (who didn’t play in in the regular-season finale, a 63–17 Hurricanes romp that had been dubbed the Heisman Bowl), and whose San Diego State team didn’t make a bowl game. Plus, he had that double stigma of being a sophomore and playing for an outlier school.

The opportunity would have been there for Georgia’s Garrison Hearst. He finished third—sitting 418 points behind Torretta—and couldn’t catch Faulk, who had 83 more rushing yards to lead the nation at 1,630, but Hearst ran for 163 yards and 2 touchdowns in a 21–14 Citrus Bowl victory over Ohio State, and had runs of 13, 11, and 8 in an 80-yard drive to set up the game-winning score.

There was enough of a backlash from Torretta’s and Miami’s performance that a Hearst victory would have been possible, even if it would have appeared to be a knee-jerk reaction.

The story goes that in 1991, Nebraska recruiter Kevin Steele sat down in a Palmetto, Florida, living room with a Manatee High School quarterback who had a very clear vision of his future:

“I felt that if I came here and played well, the way I’m capable of playing, then good things are going to happen,” Tommie Frazier would tell the Sarasota Herald-Tribune four years later, as the Cornhuskers quarterback readied to attend the ’95 Heisman Trophy ceremony.

Invited to New York along with Northwestern’s Darnell Autry, Iowa State’s Troy Davis, Ohio State’s Eddie George, and Florida’s Danny Wuerffel—a group that included the country’s leaders in rushing attempts (Autry at 387), rushing yards (Davis with 2,010), rushing touchdowns/total yards from scrimmage (George’s 24 and 2,344), and in touchdown passes/efficiency (Wuerffel at 35 and 178.4, respectively)—Frazier, who directed Nebraska to a third straight unbeaten regular season while throwing for 17 touchdowns and running for 14 in the option attack, knew where he stood in the pecking order.

“After looking at everything and everyone who is a contender, I feel I’m the best player out there,” he said.

Frazier would have to settle for two of his three goals, failing in his trophy chase as he watched George win, totaling 1,460 points to Frazier’s 1,196 behind 268 first-place votes to 218 for the Nebraska senior. Wuerffel finished third (987), with Autry fourth (535) and Davis fifth (402).

George was buoyed by a Buckeyes single-season rushing record, including a program-best 314 and 3 touchdowns in a November 11 dismantling of Illinois. But despite another 100-yard game from George in the Citrus Bowl—he had 101, to be exact, to go along with a score—Ohio State fell 20–14 to Tennessee. Volunteers running back Jay Graham outrushed George, totaling 154 yards and a touchdown.

Frazier countered with an epic performance against fellow Heisman finalist Wuerffel as the top-ranked Cornhuskers met No. 2 Florida in the Fiesta Bowl.

Frazier threw for 105 yards and a score and ran for another 199 and 2 touchdowns, as Nebraska rolled 62–24, delivering the second-worst rout in 30 meetings between the nation’s top two teams, trailing only Army when it beat Notre Dame 48–0 in 1945.

With the Cornhuskers facing second down on their own 25-yard line in the waning seconds of the third quarter, the quarterback ran the option right, faked the pitch, and gained 11 yards before he was met by a mass of five Gators defenders at the 36-yard line. He somehow emerged from the fracas, breaking 7 tackles and dragging two would-be tacklers for several yards before he was free, and headed to the sideline en route to a 75-yard touchdown and a 49–18 lead.

Said Florida coach Steve Spurrier afterward, “Tommie Frazier ran right through us.”

The run was the longest scoring run in Fiesta Bowl history, the longest in Cornhuskers history, and helped Frazier set an NCAA record for the most rushing yards by a quarterback in the postseason.

Another championship in hand, Frazier said of his performance, “I had a great career at Nebraska. There’s no better way to end it.”

With The Run, George’s setback, and Wuerffel being picked off three times and sacked a career-high seven (once for a safety), Frazier may have capped that career by crossing one more item off that to-do list he rattled off before he even arrived in Lincoln.

Delaying the voting until after the bowls are complete isn’t always a matter of rewriting Heisman history. In this case, it’s about performances that could have helped to strengthen an argument.

As broken down in Chapter Three, there was a perception—especially in Knoxville, Tennessee—that ESPN was pushing Michigan’s Charles Woodson over Tennessee’s Peyton Manning, as the Wolverines defensive back became the first primarily defensive player to win the trophy.

With the two going on to illustrious NFL careers that, interestingly enough, both ended in 2016, they remained linked because of the Heisman and their cases for it.

Woodson impacted the game in so many different facets, on defense, offense, and in the return game, but he couldn’t match Manning’s résumé after four years in Phillip Fulmer’s program.

That final season, the Volunteers quarterback was selected as the SEC Championship Game Most Valuable Player, as well as the winner of the Davey O’Brien Award and the Johnny Unitas Trophy. He also held 42 program, conference, and NCAA records. Plus, he was the son of College Football Hall of Famer, Archie.

But the case for Manning would have been dealt a serious blow after Tennessee and No. 2 Nebraska played in the Orange Bowl that year.

The Cornhuskers came in 28th against the pass, giving up 183.9 yards per game, but the belief was Tennessee—sixth in passing at 331.8 ypg—could exploit it with Manning at the controls. Instead, he had just 134 yards and didn’t complete a pass for more than 20 yards as the Volunteers went to a short passing game. He threw his lone touchdowns—a five-yarder to Peerless Price—with Nebraska already up 28–3.

“We didn’t want to hold the ball very long,” Manning said after the 42–17 loss. “There were probably a couple of times where we could have thrown the ball long and I didn’t do it, but some games are like that.”

The decision to not go deep—and give the Cornhuskers’ defense shots at the quarterback—could have had something to do with him playing after rupturing a sac in his knee in the SEC title game that resulted in a six-day stint in the hospital before Christmas. Nevertheless, the result was Manning’s second-lowest passing total of his final season.

Hours before the Tennessee quarterback’s college finale, Woodson was shouting on the Rose Bowl sideline, “We did it baby. We did it. We did it.”

With Washington State up a touchdown with eleven minutes left in the first half, the cornerback intercepted Ryan Leaf, who was third behind Woodson and Manning in the voting, stepping in front of receiver Kevin McKenzie to grab a poorly thrown ball.

“I pretty much knew what route [McKenzie] was going to run,” Woodson told the Baltimore Sun afterward. “I cut in front of him and then Ryan Leaf threw kind of a wobbly pass at me.”

He also made two key offensive plays with the Wolverines trying to drain the clock late in the game, catching two third-down passes in a 21–16 win to earn a share of the national title with Nebraska.

Woodson wasn’t the game’s MVP; that would be quarterback Brian Griese, who threw for 251 yards. But with a title and a strong final performance, could he have created an even bigger buffer with Manning in the Heisman vote? The bigger question may have been whether Leaf, after throwing for 331 yards and a score in the loss, would have challenged the Volunteers’ quarterback for second.

Imagine that: Peyton Manning in third. There might have been an entirely new conspiracy theory, one stretching from Knoxville to Ann Arbor and Pullman.

Much has been said—including in this book—about the factor that age can play in the voting, but Florida State’s Chris Weinke faced it in a different way in 2000. After spending six years in the Toronto Blue Jays farm system, where, as a first baseman, third baseman, and outfielder, he hit 69 home runs and carried a .248 average in 716 games, Weinke enrolled in school in Tallahassee. He was twenty-four years old.

At twenty-eight, he led the Seminoles to their third national championship game in as many years, and became the oldest Heisman winner in history, leading the nation with 4,167 yards passing and 33 touchdowns to 11 interceptions.

But he was left off 122 ballots as he earned a 76-point win over Oklahoma’s Josh Heupel, marking, what was at the time, the seventh-closest vote ever.

“Everything that’s happened is because of the experience I’ve gained, not the age I’ve attained,” Weinke said at the time. “When I went back to football at Florida State, I was no better a quarterback at twenty-four than I was at eighteen.”

It’s not as if he was the only one missing from voters’ top three, with 106 ballots returned sans Heupel, who had 3,392 yards and 20 touchdowns to his credit. Weinke wound up with 369 first-place votes to Heupel’s 286 (the Oklahoma passer led with 290 second-place nods), in giving the Seminoles a second Heisman (coincidentally, the first came via Charlie Ward in ’93, who was part of the same recruiting class with Weinke out of high school). But would more voters have sided with Heupel after the Sooners beat Florida State 13–2 in the Orange Bowl?

Like in the previous two bowl meetings between players that finished 1–2 in the voting—Ohio State’s Archie Griffin vs. USC’s Anthony Davis in 1974 and South Carolina’s George Rogers facing Pitt and Hugh Green in 1980—this was claimed by the runner-up.

Heupel was carried off the Pro Player Stadium field on his teammates’ shoulders, telling reporters, “It doesn’t get any sweeter than this, baby,” after throwing for 214 yards and an interception. He didn’t exactly steal the spotlight, but he helped generate just enough offense, running option plays and draws in a game defined by defense, which amounted to the lowest-scoring Orange Bowl since Penn State beat Missouri 10–3 in 1970.

“He took some vicious hits out there, vicious,” Sooners offensive coordinator Mark Mangino told reporters. “He did what he had to do to win the game. That’s why he’s a winner.

Weinke threw for 274 yards, but also tossed a pair of interceptions, including one in the end zone with 16 seconds left, as Florida State was limited to 301 yards, 248 under its season average.

“I wasn’t hitting,” Weinke said that night. “If the quarterback isn’t throwing very well, you’re not going to be successful. It was tough. It was frustrating after gaining so many yards all year.”

With some voters already quietly protesting Weinke despite setting a single-season Seminoles passing record and leading them to the brink of a national title, it’s very likely the door would have been open for Heupel, championship in hand.

No race could have potentially become more interesting with the inclusion of the bowls, if simply for the fact that the 2001 race may have ended up going in a number of different ways.

Voter response was the lightest in more than two decades, an aforementioned result of a delay in mail service after the terrorist attacks, even though the Downtown Athletic Club extended the deadline by a day and a half. That had the accounting firm of Deloitte & Touche LLP still receiving ballots hours before the announcement.

“Under the circumstances, I think it turned out pretty good,” DAC president Jim Corcoran told the Associated Press.

If ever there was a year to ditch the show-must-go-on credo and move the presentation, this was it. But Eric Crouch would win in the fourth-closest vote—besting Florida’s Rex Grossman by 62 points. Then he and Nebraska were subsequently railroaded by Miami 37–14 in the BCS Championship Game.

Crouch ran for 114 yards on 22 carries and lost a fumble, which led to Miami’s first score. He passed for 62 yards and an interception, which resulted in another Hurricanes touchdown, as James Lewis returned it 42 yards for a pick six. The loss marked the first time Crouch was held without a touchdown since September 18, 1999, against Colorado.

“We turned the ball over, and that’s what killed us,” Crouch told reporters. “We knew Miami was that type of defense, they live off turnovers. We got down too far.”

The stellar play of the Hurricane’s Ken Dorsey—third in the voting—certainly played its part as well. The junior passed for 362 yards and 3 scores to cap a perfect season and improve to 26–1 as a starter.

That would have likely given him the Heisman in a post-bowl world, though Grossman was also sensational in Florida’s 56–23 dismantling of Maryland in the Orange Bowl. He led the Gators to touchdowns on his first six drives and threw for 248 yards, even though he didn’t enter the game until 6:03 into the second quarter for missing curfew.

“Six possessions, six touchdowns. That’s unbelievable,” Spurrier said in his postgame radio interview. “I don’t think he threw a real bad pass the whole night.”

Then there was Joey Harrington, his 350 yards and 4 passing touchdowns powering the Ducks to a 38–16 victory over Colorado—which came in with wins over No. 2 Nebraska and No. 3 Texas in consecutive weeks—in the Fiesta Bowl. Completed before Miami’s rout, the game gave Oregon the hopes of a split national title if the Cornhuskers won, though the Ducks would instead have to settle on ending the season at No. 2 in the rankings.

“I’m really surprised how the game turned out,” Harrington said then. “I always believed we were going to win. The way we did it kind of surprised me.”

Where would voters have turned? Grossman, as a sophomore, would have been the unlikely choice six years before Tim Tebow broke through for the class, especially with him missing time due to a disciplinary reason (though would Spurrier have kept him out with a Heisman on the line?). In a Dorsey-Harrington debate, perfection is likely to have won out, putting the Miami quarterback at the podium.

As for Crouch, it’s difficult to see him finishing higher than fourth after the Huskers’ loss, a dramatic shift for a player who had more first- (162) and third-place (88) votes than anyone a month before.

A Jason White win by one of the slightest of margins—128 points—over Pitt’s Larry Fitzgerald seems like it could have been all the more unlikely after the Oklahoma quarterback completed just 13 of his 37 passes for 102 yards, tossed a pair of interceptions, and was sacked seven times in a 21–14 loss to LSU in the BCS title game.

“I said to him, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Heisman. I’m going to be coming at you all night,”’ said Tigers defensive end Marquise Hill after LSU limited the nation’s No. 1 offense to a mere 154 yards. The Sooners came in averaging 461.4. “I think our conference [the SEC] is the hardest and Jason White wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before.”

The only touchdown he threw went LSU’s way, as Marcus Spears picked off White’s first pass of the second half and ran it back 20 yards for a touchdown and a 21–7 Tigers lead.

“This damaged [the year] quite a bit,” White said after the Sooners ended their season at 12–1 and dropped to third in the AP and Coaches’ Polls. “You win twelve games and that’s extremely hard to do nowadays in college football, and now you don’t have anything to show for it. That’s disappointing.”

As strong as Fitzgerald was that season, tying for the national lead with 22 touchdowns and 1,672 receiving yards—168 more than second-place Geoff McArthur of Cal—he wouldn’t have been the clear winner after the postseason.

Fitzgerald all but disappeared in the Panthers’ 23–16 loss to Virginia in the Continental Tire Bowl. He had 5 catches for 77 yards, ending his NCAA record streak of 18 straight games with a touchdown, and was targeted just six times the entire game. On Pitt’s first possession, it had first-and-goal at the 1-yard line, and the Panthers went to their goal-line offense, which left Fitzgerald on the sideline as all four plays failed.

“I was definitely part of the game plan,” Fitzgerald told reporters. “Virginia just did a terrific job of taking me out of the offense.”

USC’s Matt Leinart made his case, shredding Michigan’s sixth-ranked pass defense for 327 yards while throwing 3 touchdowns and catching another on a 15-yard reverse handoff from Mike Williams, as the Trojans claimed the AP national title.

At sixth in the voting the month before with just five first-place votes and 127 points in all, the belief that Leinart could have risen up to win the Heisman even after the victory over the Wolverines may be a stretch.

Eli Manning, though, could have been in the right position with the right performance and the right lineage to take the trophy after his own playoff performance.

The Ole Miss quarterback was third with 710 points, but threw for 259 yards and 2 touchdowns and had a rushing score as the 16th-ranked Rebels beat No. 21 Oklahoma State in the Cotton Bowl. The victory gave Ole Miss its first 10-win season since 1971, and was the program’s first triumph in January since the ’70 Sugar Bowl.

The quarterback at the helm of the Rebels on that day in 1970? Eli’s dad, Archie.

“When I came to Ole Miss, everyone expected me to bring the program back to its glory days,” Eli said. “I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself.”

The patriarch came in third in the ’70 voting behind Stanford’s Jim Plunkett and Notre Dame’s Joe Theismann, and Eli’s big brother Peyton, of course, was the runner-up in 1997. If the Cotton Bowl came into play, there’s a real possibility that the youngest Manning—with his final performance, the missteps/underwhelming efforts of his challengers and the fact that he’s a Manning—could have done what Archie and Peyton couldn’t when it came to the Heisman.

“Not everything in life is going to go the exact way you want it,” Troy Smith said after he and Ohio State, the nation’s top-ranked team the entire season, had been shellacked 41–14 by No. 2 Florida in the 2007 BCS title game. “I don’t have any regrets, though. I really don’t. We came out and fought. We came up short.

That night would prove to alter the college football landscape, as the SEC took over, starting a streak of seven consecutive national titles. The game’s place as a springboard, of course, wasn’t clear on January 8, 2007. It was simply a stunning beatdown, as the Buckeyes—who were seven-point favorites and winners of 19 straight—fell to a Gators team that many felt didn’t belong in Glendale, Arizona.

Ohio State managed just 82 yards, and its Heisman-winning quarterback, quite literally, took the brunt of the punishment.

The Heisman winner, after receiving 86.7 percent of the first-place votes (801), also tallied 91.63 percent of the possible points with 2,540—both records. Yet the lasting image of Smith in his final game was his being chased down by helmetless Gators linebacker Earl Everett. He was sacked five times in all, was just 4 of 14 passing for 35 yards and an interception, and was held to minus-29 rushing yards on 10 attempts.

Given this result, had the vote taken place after the title game, who would have been best positioned to take advantage?

Among the top five vote-getters, running back Darren McFadden (Arkansas), who was the runner-up, was held in check—compiling 89 yards on 19 carries—and out of the end zone in a 17–14 loss to Wisconsin in the Capital One Bowl. Third-place Brady Quinn completed just 15 of 35 passes for 149 yards and two picks in Notre Dame’s 41–14 defeat at the hands of LSU in the Sugar Bowl. West Virginia’s Steve Slaton (fourth) had 11 rushing yards on 3 carries and was outplayed by his quarterback, Pat White, who had 131 yards passing, 145 rushing, and 3 total touchdowns, in beating Georgia Tech 38–35 in the Gator Bowl. Finally, Michigan running back Mike Hart had only 47 yards on 17 carries in losing to USC 32–18.

Hawaii’s Colt Brenann—sixth in the voting—had the most impressive bowl game, torching Arizona State for 559 yards, 5 touchdowns, and a pick on 33 of 42 passing in a 41–24 win in the Hawaii Bowl. That capped a record-setting season in which he led the nation in nine major statistical categories, including yards (5,549), touchdowns (58), efficiency rating (186), and completion percentage (72.6).

He would have remained a long shot, though, playing in the WAC with zero wins against Top 25 teams and only one against a major-conference opponent in Purdue, which was 8–6.

McFadden, despite those struggles against the Badgers, ran for 1,647 yards and 14 scores, had 149 yards and another touchdown receiving, reached the end zone in the return game, and threw for 3 more scores out of the Wild Hog formation during the regular season—the work of offensive coordinator and future Auburn coach Gus Malzahn. That dynamic game may have been enough, especially after Smith’s debacle against the Gators.

We already know that the majority of voters were prepared to make Tebow the equal of Archie Griffin in 2008, backing him with nine more first-place votes than the winner, Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford, and thirty-four more than second-place Colt McCoy of Texas.

It wasn’t enough, as he came in behind Bradford and McCoy, in what amounted to the second-closest gap between first and third in history at 151 points, trailing only 2001 when Dorsey was 142 shy of Crouch.

But after the bowls, it may have been even more difficult to deny the Florida quarterback a spot as the second two-time winner.

“Tebow,” Gators receiver Percy Harvin said afterward, “just call him Superman.”

Tebow overcame a career-high 2 interceptions, throwing for 231 yards and 2 touchdowns—the second of which, a four-yard jump pass to David Nelson with 3:07 to play, proved to be the clinching score—and ran for 109 yards. It was vintage Tebow with a dash of something very different as, after a 13-yard run, he was pulled down hard by the Sooners’ Nic Harris. Tebow popped up and jawed at the defender, then did the Gator Chomp. The result was an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

“I was already motivated for a national championship game. But you know, there was some trash talking going on, and it just gets me going during the game,” Tebow told reporters.

On the other side of the field, Bradford wasn’t horrendous, throwing for 256 yards and 2 scores, but he also tossed a pair of interceptions, along with 15 incompletions on his 41 attempts. He was resigned to being a spectator as Florida, led by Tebow, claimed a second title.

Runner-up McCoy certainly would have put up a fight in post-bowl voting, after his late-game heroics against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. Down 21–17 with 2:05 to play, the quarterback hit on 7 of 10 passes for 76 yards—including 3 big ones on fourth-and-3 when he hit James Kirkendoll—and ran for 2 more yards. It culminated with a 26-yard scoring strike to Quan Cosby with 16 seconds to play to give McCoy a school-record 41 completions, 414 yards, 2 passing touchdowns and another on the ground.

“He is so strong-willed and he is a guy that’s very confident, and he never thinks he is going to lose,” Texas coach Mack Brown would say.

McCoy may have been the choice, especially if some voters still refused to put Tebow in Griffin’s class. But that seems the only scenario that would have kept Tim Tebow from history if the voting took place just a month later.

With forty-one bowl games being hosted as of the 2016–17 season, the Heisman’s tradition of awarding the trophy prior to their start has become outdated. Of the 128 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, 63 percent are playing in those postseason games, and given that just one Heisman recipient to date has been on a losing team—Paul Hornung on 2–8 Notre Dame in 1956—the winner is a lock to be in one of those games.

It’s not likely to change anytime soon, but for an award that has overcome so many biases and glass ceilings over the years, preserving the sanctity of the Heisman may need to include getting with the times.