Trophy Whiff

Matt Leinart’s Heisman Trophy weighs a hefty 25 pounds.

It is light, however, compared to the burden felt by some winners of the most prestigious statuette in sports.

Especially quarterbacks in bowl championship series title games.

Florida State’s Chris Weinke. Nebraska’s Eric Crouch. Oklahoma’s Jason White.

All three foundered in national-championship game losses less than a month after they were voted college football’s most outstanding player and hauled home the Heisman from New York. Their failure to emerge victorious from the post-Heisman blitz provides plenty of fodder for “Heisman jinx” theorists.

Leinart, USC’s laid-back junior quarterback, is not one of them.

“I don’t think there’s a jinx,” he said flatly.

Nevertheless, Leinart will try to break from recent Heisman tradition Tuesday night when he leads the top-ranked Trojans against No. 2 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl at Pro Player Stadium.

A victory would complete the Trojans’ first perfect season since 1972. It also would make USC the first school to win at least a share of back-to-back national titles since Nebraska in 1994 and 1995.

On a personal front, Leinart could increase his record to 25-1 since replacing 2002 Heisman winner Carson Palmer at the controls of USC’s high-powered offense.

But those milestones might not be reached unless Leinart overcomes the real or imagined Heisman jinx in what could be his final game for the Trojans.

“I really don’t think much of the jinx at all,” Leinart said. “I think of Carson winning and tearing up Iowa two years ago.”

Palmer did, indeed, torch Iowa in the 2003 Orange Bowl. He passed for 303 yards and a touchdown in a 38-17 victory and was selected as the most valuable player. Less than four months later, the Cincinnati Bengals chose him first in the NFL draft.

But the 2003 Orange Bowl was not the national championship game. USC was fourth in the BCS standings, Iowa fifth.

It apparently gets rougher for pass-throwing Heisman fraternity members when it’s No. 1 vs. No. 2.

As The Times’ Chris Dufresne noted last month:

* Weinke, the 2000 Heisman winner, completed 25 of 51 passes with two interceptions and a fumble in Florida State’s 13-2 loss to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl.

* Crouch, the 2001 winner, rushed for more than 100 yards but completed only five of 15 passes with an interception in Nebraska’s 37-14 loss to Miami in the Rose Bowl.

* White, the 2003 winner, completed 13 of 37 passes with two interceptions for Oklahoma in last year’s 21-14 Sugar Bowl loss to Louisiana State.

The trio of Heisman winners combined for zero touchdown passes and five interceptions on college football’s biggest traveling stage.

That does not figure to be the case Tuesday in the first college football game featuring two Heisman winners.

White, a sixth-year senior, rebounded from last year’s season-ending flameouts against Kansas State and LSU by passing for 2,961 yards and 33 touchdowns with six interceptions. He finished third in 2004 Heisman balloting behind Leinart and Sooner running back Adrian Peterson.

Leinart, sixth in Heisman balloting in 2003, passed for 2,990 yards and 28 touchdowns with six interceptions.

White knows that Leinart has been dogged by questions about the jinx. He answered the same ones before playing LSU.

“That’s all I answered last year,” White said, laughing. “I don’t think there’s a Heisman jinx. For me, I didn’t play well last year, but it wasn’t because I won the Heisman. It’s because the whole team didn’t play well.”

Leinart concurred.

“You’ve got to give credit to LSU -- they just pressured him all day and ... he didn’t have much he could do,” Leinart said. “No one is perfect. You’re going to have a bad game here and there, it just so happens he didn’t play his best in the big game.”

Oklahoma offensive coordinator Chuck Long, however, said the pressure to validate the Heisman honor affected White.

“He was a one-year starter and a lot had come on him all at once,” Long said. “That’s hard to handle for anybody. You do the best you can but anybody is going to feel the pressure of winning, of doing it all every play after that.”

Norm Chow, USC’s offensive coordinator, is not worried about Leinart, the third Heisman-winning quarterback he has tutored.

In the 1990 Holiday Bowl, Heisman winner Ty Detmer of Brigham Young suffered two shoulder separations and was forced to leave early in the third quarter of a 65-14 loss to Texas A&M.; He finished with 120 yards passing, the only time he was held under 300 yards that season.

Palmer obviously fared better against Iowa.

Now, Chow said, Leinart must embrace the pressure of playing in college football’s biggest showcase.

“This is the kind of game where the quarterback has to step up,” Chow said. “To not magnify that is wrong. ... On the other hand, you contradict yourself and say, ‘Don’t try too hard. Let the game come to you.’ ”

Leinart did that almost without error in last year’s Rose Bowl. He threw three touchdown passes and caught another and the Trojans clinched a share of the national title with a 28-14 victory over Michigan.

But that was almost a year before the Heisman. Before the month-long buildup to the national championship game.

Trojan Coach Pete Carroll is hoping Leinart follows the Orange Bowl example set by Palmer, who finished his NFL season Sunday and is expected to attend Tuesday night’s game.

“I think he’ll handle it just fine,” Carroll said.

So does White, who seemed relieved when Leinart won the Heisman.

“Matt’s a smart kid. He’s not going to let that get in his head,” White said.

But when asked if he was glad that the Heisman burden would be on the opposing quarterback’s shoulders Tuesday night, White grinned.

“Definitely,” he said.