College Football Recruiting: How last 10 Heisman winners ranked as recruits

8. Cam Newton, QB, Auburn (2010 winner)

Cam Newton most certainly didn’t have the most pedestrian college career in terms of the path that he took through the ranks of the sport. He started with the Florida Gators before being unceremoniously dismissed from the program, upon which he had to enroll in a junior college. After that stint, he then landed with the Auburn Tigers, which is where his star was born. But way back when the Gators were wooing him, it was clear he was a stud.

Newton was a bonafide 5-star recruit coming out of high school in 2007, ranked as the No. 2 dual-threat quarterback prospect in the country, the second-best player in the state of Georgia and the 26th-best player overall in the country. It was clear that the physical freak had all of the tools to wind up being what he was at Auburn — he just never amounted to that at the school that originally recruited him.

7. Robert Griffin III, QB, Baylor (2011 winner)

The professional career of Robert Griffin III has largely become a joke — and that might largely not be due to him, but rather the severe mishandling of the situation by the Washington Redskins. However, there’s a reason that he came into the league with such hype and promise, and that’s because of what he was able to show while playing for the Baylor Bears. And really, there were signs he would be a star, even if he had to put the program largely on the map.

While the Copperas Cove High School product was coming out of high school, he was a 4-star player and the No. 6 ranked dual-threat quarterback in the 2008 recruiting class. Sure, RG3 was only the 293rd overall prospect in his class, but it was still a large get for Baylor and ultimately proved to be the right decision for Griffin. Playing for the Bears, he was able to become a star when other programs might not have allowed him the same opportunities to make even a 4-star rating look like under-selling him.