Heisman Trophy

USC has won the most Heisman trophies with eight. Ohio State, Oklahoma, and Notre Dame each have seven. Ohio State has had six different players win the award. The closest margin of votes was in 2009 between winner Mark Ingram II of Alabama and Toby Gerhart of Stanford. Ten Heisman Trophy winners are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Four winners have also been named Most Valuable Player in a Super Bowl. Some winners have gone on to play in other professional sports, including Bo Jackson in baseball and Charlie Ward in basketball. Pete Dawkins and Dick Kazmaier are the only winners not to pursue a professional sports career: Dawkins had a career with the United States Army, where he achieved the rank of Brigadier General, while Kazmaier attended Harvard Business School, founded a consulting company specializing in sports marketing, and chaired the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition in 1988–89. Trophy in 2025. in 1973. The trophy, designed by sculptor Frank Eliscu, is modeled after Ed Smith, a leading player in 1934 for the now-defunct New York University football team. The trophy is made out of cast bronze, is tall, long, in width and weighs . Eliscu had asked Smith, his former George Washington High School classmate, to pose for a commissioned sculpture of a football player. Smith did not realize until 1982 that the sculpture had become the Heisman Trophy. The Downtown Athletic Club presented Smith with a Heisman Trophy of his own in 1985. From its inception in 1935, the statue was cast by Dieges & Clust in New York (and later Providence, Rhode Island) until 1980, when Dieges and Clust was sold to Herff Jones. For a time until at least 2008, the statues were cast by Roman Bronze Works in New York. Since 2005 the trophy has been made by MTM Recognition in Del City, Oklahoma. ==Selection process==

Originally only players east of the Mississippi were eligible. Since 1936, all football players playing in all divisions of college football nationwide are eligible for the award, though winners usually represent Division I Football Bowl Subdivision schools. There are three categories of eligible voters for the award winner: • Sports journalists: Heisman.com states that sports journalists are to be the determinants of the award since they are "informed, competent, and impartial." There are 870 media voters: 145 voters from each of six regions. • Previous Heisman winners. In cases where an underclassman wins the award and remains in school to play, a prior winner may also be a current candidate. According to Heisman.com there are currently 57 prior winners eligible to vote Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was the first freshman to win the Heisman in 2012. In 2013, freshman Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston won the Heisman. Both were in their second year of college, having been redshirted during their first year of attendance, meaning that no true freshman has yet won the award. No sophomore won the Heisman in its first 72 years, at which point there were three consecutive sophomore winners—Tim Tebow in 2007, followed by Sam Bradford and Mark Ingram II. Lamar Jackson, who also surpassed Winston's record as the youngest Heisman winner, became the fourth in 2016. Of the four sophomores to have won the award, only Bradford had been redshirted. The others all won during their second year of college attendance. Only a few juniors have won the award, starting with the eleventh winner in 1945, Doc Blanchard. Five players have finished in the top three of the Heisman voting as freshmen or sophomores before later winning the award: Angelo Bertelli, Glenn Davis, Doc Blanchard, Doak Walker, and Herschel Walker. Eight players have finished in the top three as freshmen or sophomores but never won a Heisman: Clint Castleberry, Marshall Faulk, Michael Vick, Rex Grossman, Larry Fitzgerald, Adrian Peterson, Deshaun Watson, and Christian McCaffrey. Four players have specifically finished second in consecutive years: Glenn Davis (second in 1944 and 1945, winner in 1946), Charlie Justice (second in 1948 and 1949), Darren McFadden (second in 2006 and 2007), and Andrew Luck (second in 2010 and 2011). The oldest and youngest Heisman winners ever both played for Atlantic Coast Conference schools. The oldest, Chris Weinke, was 28 years old when he won in 2000. He spent six years in minor league baseball before enrolling at Florida State. The youngest winner is 2016 recipient Lamar Jackson of Louisville at the age of . ==History==

In 1935, the award was first presented by the Downtown Athletic Club (DAC) in New York City, a privately owned recreation facility located on the lower west side near the later World Trade Center site. It was first known simply as the DAC Trophy. The first winner, Jay Berwanger, was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles but declined to sign for them. He never played professional football for any team. In 1936, John Heisman died and the trophy was renamed in his honor. Larry Kelley, the second winner of the award, was the first man to win it as the "Heisman Trophy". The first African American player to win the Heisman was Syracuse's Ernie Davis, who never played a snap in the NFL. He was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after winning the award and died in 1963. In 1966, former Florida Gators quarterback Steve Spurrier gave his Heisman trophy to university president J. Wayne Reitz, so that the award could be shared by Florida students and faculty. O. J. Simpson's 1968 trophy was sold in February 1999 for $230,000 as part of the settlement of the civil trial following the acquittal in his murder case. The 2008 Heisman press conference was held at the Sports Museum of America at 26 Broadway near the old Downtown Club building. There was an entire gallery with the museum-attraction dedicated to the Trophy, including the making of the Trophy, the history of the DAC, and information on John Heisman and all the Trophy's winners. There was also a dedicated area celebrating the most recent winner, and the opportunity for visitors to cast their vote for the next winner (with the top vote-winner receiving 1 official vote on their behalf). The Sports Museum of America closed permanently in February 2009. After Palladium Times Square (then PlayStation Theater) closed in December 2019, the Heisman Trust began searching for a new location to conduct the trophy presentation. The 2020 ceremony would ultimately be held at the studios of ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut due to the COVID-19 pandemic; the ceremony was a virtual event with all participants appearing via remote interviews. The 2021 ceremony returned to an in-person event, with the presentation held at The Appel Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Television coverage WOR-TV broadcast the 1949 ceremonies. Before 1977, the presentation of the award was not televised as a stand-alone special, but rather as a quick in-game feature. The ceremony usually aired on ABC as a feature at halftime of the last major national telecast (generally a rivalry game) of the college football season. ABC essentially showed highlights since the award was handed out as part of an annual weeknight dinner at the DAC. At the time, the event had usually been scheduled for the week following the Army–Navy Game. The most watched Heisman ceremony ever was in 2009 when Mark Ingram won over Toby Gerhart and Colt McCoy. Broadcasters include: • CBS (1977–1980, 1986–1990) • ABC (1981–1984) – owned-and-operated stations only • Syndication (1981–1985) • NBC (1985) – owned-and-operated stations only • NBC (1991–1993) • ESPN (1994–present) ==Controversies and politics==

Regional bias controversy A number of critics have expressed concern about the unwritten rules regarding player position and age, as noted above. Over the years, there has been substantial criticism of a regional bias, suggesting that the Heisman balloting process has ignored West Coast players. Before the breakup of the Pac-12 Conference (formerly Pac-10 and Pac-8), they represented 12 of the 65 teams in the Power Five conferences. The Heisman can be, and has been, presented to players from other conferences, but a random sample over a long period of time might suggest that Pac-10/12 players might win somewhere close to 18% of the Heisman awards. In the 20 seasons between 1981 (Marcus Allen) and 2002 (Carson Palmer), not a single Pacific-10 Conference or other West Coast player won the Heisman Trophy. Four Southern California (USC) players have won the Trophy in the early years of the 21st century and three won it subsequent to Palmer. Although Terry Baker, quarterback from Oregon State, won the trophy in 1962, and Gary Beban from UCLA won in 1967, no non-USC player from the West Coast had won between Stanford's Jim Plunkett in 1970 and Oregon's Marcus Mariota in 2014. Other than Mariota's win, the closest since Plunkett's win have been Chuck Muncie, John Elway, Toby Gerhart, Andrew Luck, Christian McCaffrey, and Bryce Love. Muncie was a running back for the California Golden Bears who finished second in the Heisman balloting in 1975. The other five were Stanford players who finished second in the Heisman balloting in 1982, and each year from 2009 to 2011, 2015, and 2017. The West Coast bias discussion usually centers on the idea that East Coast voters see few West Coast games, because of television coverage contracts, time zone differences, or cultural interest. At Heisman-projection website StiffArmTrophy.com, commentator Kari Chisholm claims that the Heisman balloting process itself is inherently biased: For Heisman voting purposes, the nation is divided into six regions—each of which get 145 votes. Put another way, each region gets exactly 16.67 percent of the votes. However, each region does not constitute an even one-sixth of the population. Three regions (Far West, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic) have larger populations than 16.67% of the national population; and three have less (Northeast, South, and Southwest). In fact, the Far West has the greatest population at 21.2% of the country and the Northeast has the least at 11.9%. Nullification of 2005 award and reinstatement In 2010 University of Southern California athletic director Pat Haden announced the university would return its replica of the 2005 Heisman Trophy due to NCAA sanctions requiring the university to dissociate itself from Reggie Bush. The NCAA found that Bush had received gifts from an agent while at USC. On September 14, 2010, Bush voluntarily forfeited his title as a Heisman winner. The next day, the Heisman Trust announced the 2005 award would remain vacated and removed all mention of the 2005 award from its official website. Bush eventually returned the trophy itself to the Heisman Trust in 2012. Critical responses from the national media were strident and varied. CBSSports.com producer J. Darin Darst opined that Bush "should never have been pressured to return the award." Kalani Simpson of Fox Sports wrote, "Nice try Heisman Trust...It's a slick move to try to wipe the slate clean." Former Football Writers Association of America president Dennis Dodd, on the other hand, decided to fictitiously award Bush's vacated 2005 award to Vince Young, the original runner-up that year. He wrote, "Since the Heisman folks won't re-vote, we did. Vince Young is the new winner of the 2005 Heisman." A Los Angeles Times piece argued that Bush's Heisman was "tainted," but lamented that the decision came five years after Bush was awarded the trophy and, therefore, four years after the expiration of Bush's term as current holder of the Heisman title. On April 24, 2024, the Heisman Trust announced the formal reinstatement of Reggie Bush's trophy amid what it called "enormous changes in the college football landscape". The Trust cited "fundamental changes in college athletics" in which rules that have allowed student athlete compensation to become an accepted practice and the 2021 United States Supreme Court decision against the NCAA in the Alston case, which the Trust said "questioned the legality of the NCAA's amateurism model and opened the door to student athlete compensation". The school's copy of Bush's Heisman Trophy has still been kept by the Heisman Trust. ==Notes==