Heisman Trophy shouldn’t be just another award for quarterbacks

The Heisman Trophy is supposed to be awarded to the best college football player in the nation, but it has somehow morphed a quarterback statistic competition.

Every season there are incredible and deserving players who are tragically overlooked by the Heisman Trophy voting community because they aren’t a quarterback.

When the Heisman Trophy is mentioned, the first thing most people think about is “the pose”. A leather-helmeted player (Ed Smith, NYU, for you trivia buffs) running with the ball, throwing a stiff-arm at invisible defenders as depicted on the famous 45-pound bronze trophy.

I doubt many would picture a quarterback with his arm cocked, ready to read through his progressions.

The award was designed to be presented each year to the most outstanding college football player in the United States. Yet somehow in the last couple of decades, it has seemingly been reduced to the best quarterback in the Power-5 conferences.

Here’s a newsflash for all the Heisman voters and fan-pollers out there. We have an award for the best quarterback in the nation, and it’s called the Davey O’Brien Award. There’s no need to feel tied to quarterbacks when evaluating talent for the Heisman, and there are outstanding players doing fantastic things in smaller schools.

To be fair, the quarterback position has evolved tremendously since the Heisman Trophy was first introduced in 1935. No other player touches the ball as often as a quarterback during the course of a game (other than his center), and few players can have as profound an effect on a game as the quarterback.

But that doesn’t mean a quarterback is necessarily the most outstanding player in the land. It doesn’t have to be a running back either, for that matter.

In the history of the award, here is a breakdown of winners by position from 1935 to 2018.

As if the preponderance of running backs (including fullbacks and half backs) and quarterbacks isn’t disturbing enough, the last time someone who played any other position won the award was in 1997, which was also the last time a non-offensive player won – Michigan cornerback/punt returner, Charles Woodson. The last receiver? Desmond Howard in 1991.

But it gets worse.

The Heisman was dominated by running backs in the early years of the award, but since the year 2000 only three non-quarterbacks have won, and one of those — Reggie Bush, 2005 — has been vacated.

16 quarterbacks in 19 years. That’s way out of proportion, and it doesn’t have to be that way. There have been outstanding players at other positions — that made more of fewer opportunities to help their team and show their greatness — who have been overlooked simply because they weren’t under center.

Circling back to our bookmark of the year 2000, think about some of the runners-up who really may have been more deserving based on what they were able to accomplish without having the ball in their hands on practically every offensive snap. Names like Melvin Gordon, Larry Fitzgerald, Amari Cooper, Manti Te’o, Jadeveon Clowney and Tyrann Mathieu.

Mathieu is a perfect example. 2011 Heisman winner, Robert Griffin III wasn’t even able to lead his team to a shot at the Big 12 title. Statistically, RG3 had a fantastic season, but the Heisman should be more than just stat-compiling. Is LSU even in the 2011 BCS National Championship Game without the Honey Badger? Not a chance.

Te’o singlehandedly took over games for Notre Dame in their national championship bid of 2012. Johnny Manziel, that year’s winner, had some flashes of brilliance under the national spotlight, and his Heisman candidacy was fueled by a huge media hype machine. His Texas A&M Aggies finished third in the SEC West.

Te’o was clearly the more deserving candidate.

There are many seasons, and 2019 is probably one of them, where a quarterback actually is the most outstanding player in the country, but it’s become too easy to have quarterback tunnel-vision when looking for Heisman candidates.

If a player is the best quarterback in the nation, he should take home the Davey O’Brien Award, but that isn’t supposed to be an automatic prequel to winning the Heisman. Hopefully, voters will widen their field of vision in future seasons to prevent having a room full of quarterbacks at the annual Heisman Trophy presentation.

For more NCAA football news, analysis, opinion and unique coverage by FanSided, including Heisman Trophy and College Football Playoff rankings, be sure to bookmark these pages.

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