Why Hasn’t Anyone Repeated as Heisman Winner?

Did you guys know that 1975 was 45 years ago? That’s the year Archie won his second trophy – again in dominant fashion. He more than doubled the votes of the second place guy both years! After Archie, here’s the list of guys that won the Heisman but couldn’t repeat (or had a shot but went pro). Voting from the Heisman Section at sports-reference.com.

• Billy Sims – Wins in 1978, though he has less first place votes than Chuck Fusina. But in 1979, Charles White from USC has a monster 2000 yard rushing season and it’s not even close.
• Herschel Walker – Just a quick aside to talk about how awesome Herschel Walker was… he was 3rd in 1980 as a freshman behind George Rogers and Hugh Green (who the hell are those guys), 2nd in 1981, losing to Marcus Allen (but ahead of Jim McMahon, Dan Marino, and Art Schlichter), and 1st in 1982, ahead of John Elway and Eric Dickerson. Walker went pro after his Junior season, but probably would have won as a senior, right? Over Mike Rozier (Nebraska) and Steve Young? And, speaking of winning, Walker gave a great speech at the Republican National Convention this year.
• Barry Sanders – Barry wins in 1988 as a junior. 7.6 yards per carry, 2628 yards, 37 TD’s. It’s a joke that 70 voters put Rodney Peete 1st and 31 put Troy Aikman 1st. Anyway, Barry goes pro and would have easily repeated. 3rd overall pick to Detroit.
• Andre Ware – junior QB from Houston, throws for almost 5000 yards in 1989 and just squeaks out a win over Anthony Thompson from Indiana. Andre goes pro as the 7th overall pick, also to Detroit. The Lions got back to back Heisman winners and go on to win the next 5 Super Bowls.
• Ty Detmer – as a junior in 1990, Detmer wins a pretty close vote over another junior, Rocket Ismail. He starts slow as a senior and finishes 3rd behind Desmond Howard and Casey Weldon (Florida State).
• Desmond Howard – Desmond wins as a junior in 1991 and goes pro. Could he have beaten Gino Toretta the next year? I say no – he probably would have pulled a hamstring doing the Heisman pose 38 times per game.
• Rashaan Salaam – Salaam, from Colorado, wins in 1994 pretty handily over Ki-Jana Carter, and then goes pro (23rd overall pick to the Bears). But, obviously, he wouldn’t have repeated in 1995 over Eddie Fucking George!
• Charles Woodson – Squeaks out a win over Peyton Manning in 1997 as a junior and then goes 4th overall in the 1998 draft to the Raiders. Even if he comes back, he probably loses to Ricky Williams in 1998.
• Jason White – wins in 2003 as a junior over probably 5 others who had better seasons. Sophomore Larry Fitzgerald had 22 TD catches. Darren Sproles had almost 2000 yards rushing. Philip Rivers had 4500 yards for a mediocre NC State team. And Ben Roethlisberger threw for 4500 yards for a fucking awesome 13-1 Miami Redhawks team. Either Ben or Larry should have won. Thanks to Ben for making my senior year at Miami quite fun and also for covering the spread fairly regularly. Anyway, Jason White comes in 3rd as a senior in 2004 behind Matt Leinart and Adrian Peterson.
• Matt Leinart – wins in 2004 as a junior, but the following year Reggie is awesome so his teammate wins.
• Reggie Bush – wins in 2005. The best part about this year is that Reggie’s name is just crossed out of the record books. He’s still there, but it’s crossed out. They didn’t just hand the trophy to Vince Young? Hello my name is Reggie Bush. Anyway, he goes pro because he didn’t want to lose to Troy Smith the following year and also because of the NCAA violations that exploded the USC football team for 15 years.
• Tim Tebow – wins as a Sophomore in 2007 over Darren McFadden (2nd year in a row in 2nd place. Sorry Darren), Colt Brennan, Chase Daniel, Dennis Dixon, Pat White, Matt Ryan, Kevin Smith, Glenn Dorsey, and Chris Long. Possibly the worst year for the skill guys, except for Tebow who was awesome and weird. As a junior he gets 3rd behind Sam Bradford (50TDs!) and Colt McCoy. And as a senior he’s 5th, behind Mark Ingram, Toby Gerhart(!), Colt McCoy, and Ndamukong Suh.
• Sam Bradford – wins as a Sophomore in 2008 but gets hurt and only plays 3 games in 2009. He’s still the first pick in the 2010 draft and signed a six-year, $78 million contract containing $50 million in guaranteed salary. $50M guaranteed! Immediately the next collective bargaining agreement put a stop to that insanity. He made $129M in 9 years, or, as the Sporting News has calculated, $3.7M per win. I mean, check out this brutal takedown. Those guys hate Sam Bradford.
• Mark Ingram – another sophomore, wins in 2009 in a squeaker over the aforementioned Toby Gerhart(!). In 2010 as a junior he has only half the carries and half the yards for a 10-3 Bama team that also had Trent Richardson and Eddie Lacy at RB and a big chunk of plays that went to Julio Jones. Also, in 2010 Cam Newton won and no one else had a chance.
• Cam Newton – smokes everyone as a junior in 2010, wins the title, immediately goes pro as the NCAA violations talk heats up.
• Robert Griffin III – Baylor QB wins in 2011 in a pretty close vote over Andrew Luck, who was also second place to Cam the previous year. Luck goes first in the 2012 draft and RG3 goes second. Russell Wilson gets 9th in the Heisman and goes 75th.
• Johnny Manziel – 2012 – Manziel has a solid, highlight-filled year as a freshman and wins over Manti Te’o and his fake girlfriend, Collin Klein (apparently a QB from Kansas State), Marqise Lee (apparently a WR from USC), and Braxton Miller. Johnny gets 5th in 2013 as a sophomore when he has a better season but his team goes 9-4 (and Jameis Winston shows up). And then Johnny goes pro and embarks upon a hall of fame NFL career.
• Jameis Winston wins in 2013 as a freshman over AJ McCarron, Jordan Lynch, and Andre Williams. No idea who those last 2 guys are. As a sophomore, Jameis gets 6th place and has a slightly worse year, finishing behind Marcus Mariota, Melvin Gordon, Amari Cooper, Trevone Boykin, and AN OHIO STATE FRESHMAN NAMED JT BARRETT. And then he goes pro. Also a rape accusation and coverup by the entire state of Florida, Jeb Bush, Karl Rove, and Jeffrey Epstein.
• Marcus Mariota – wins as a junior in 2014 as noted above and goes pro. 2nd overall pick to the Titans. Also, he wasn’t allowed to go back to Oregon after getting murdered by the Buckeyes in the title game. Did you know we won the first ever college football playoff? In storybook fashion?? No one ever talks about this.
• Derrick Henry wins as a Junior in 2015 over Christian McCaffrey, Deshaun Watson, and Baker Mayfield. That’s a great top 4. And of course he goes pro.
• Lamar Jackson – wins in 2016 over Deshaun. Deshaun wins the title though. In 2017, Baker Mayfield breaks through and wins in a landslide, with Lamar getting 3rd.
• Kyler Murray – wins in 2018 over Tua Tagovailoa and Dwayne Haskins. He goes pro. Not that anyone in 2019 was coming close to Ohio’s Own Joe Burrow!

Whew that was a lot. All this is my way of saying the Buckeyes are the BEST and we get to lord this over everyone’s head until the end of time, it appears. Also, if someone has a good season now, they go pro if they can. Not a lot of badass juniors or redshirt sophomores staying for another year to get injured when they can get a guaranteed 10 or 20 or 30 million dollars.

Obviously I can’t make the case for Justin Fields to win the trophy this year, but wouldn’t it be lovely if he stayed for the 2021 season, threw for 50 TD’s, cemented his legacy as a BUCKEYE LEGEND, and won the Heisman? It would be dumb from a financial perspective, but who wants to be the Jaguars or Jets QB next year?? Am I right Justin?? Just kidding. Stay healthy. Go get that money.

2 dudes from Alabama, DeVonta Smith and Mac Jones, are finalists this year, along with Trevor Lawrence from Clemson and Kyle Trask from Florida. Jones is the Bama QB and DeVonta Smith is one of those Alabama wide receivers that is so fast and smooth he looks like he’s playing against a mediocre high school team. They’re going to give it to Trevor, right? Like a lifetime achievement award… think Ron Dayne or Ricky Williams. And then he can go get the shit kicked out of him in Jacksonville. Or become a great QB for 15 years. Dammit. Let’s go Buckeyes, it would be nice to beat Clemson ONCE IN YOUR LIFE.

-Eric