Heisman Voters No Prophets

Heisman Trophy time again. The ballot is in the mail. Honest.

I won’t tell you how I voted. Not kosher. But I will say I’m not at all sure it will be for the right one. Somehow, it never is.

You see, the Heisman, while not exactly a jinx, is not altogether a promise of great things to come.

A little entity called the NFL has come along to complicate the coronations.

You see, in the old days, before professional football, you could vote for an end from Yale, a halfback from the University of Chicago or a dropkicker from Duke or a passer from Princeton with relative impunity.

No more. Today, you run the risk of the man you tapped as the greatest football player of his undergraduate year not making it past the pro tryouts or, maybe, not moving beyond being a backup or special teams player in the pros.

The man who was probably the most famous football player in the game’s history was pre-Heisman. But Red Grange, in a sense, made pro football. The scribe who first fastened the cognomen “Galloping Ghost” on him performed a distinctive service to the professional game. Entrepreneurs, among them the Chicago Bears’ George Halas, were quick to cash in on that alliteration. Red was one of the first who played postgraduate football and created an industry in the process.

It’s difficult to determine how proficient a pro he was. The game was in its gypsy phase then, records were haphazard, integrity was questionable and the level of play impossible to measure. Red was a marquee name. He no longer had to be good, just present.

The “Four Horsemen” were the beneficiaries of a lively press box imagination too, in this case Grantland Rice’s. He fastened that fancy sobriquet on a backfield of spindly but resourceful ballhandlers and they cashed in resoundingly, mainly on pickup games for wily promoters in the Northeast.

Today, if a player has a Heisman, he doesn’t need a catchy nickname. He’s got all the cachet he needs.

But he goes on now to put his reputation on the line. And, as much as the Heisman purists might protest that their award has nothing to do with the pros, it frequently has everything to do with the pros. It’s where you validate your Heisman.

An interesting case in point came up the other night when the “Monday Night Football” telecast posted a chart of some of the greatest pro runners in the history of the game. Among them were Walter Payton, Franco Harris, Jim Brown and Emmitt Smith.

What they also had in common is that none of them won the Heisman. As near as I can tell, none of them even came close.

Walter Payton holds the NFL record for most yards gained as a pro (16,726). But the highest he got in the Heisman voting was 14th. Archie Griffin, who never really made it big in the pros, was winning the first of his two Heismans that year.

No one is suggesting an Archie Griffin is unworthy. The Heisman selectors are, after all, dealing from a lofty position of amateurism only. The winners’ progression in the ranks of hired hands is a matter of indifference to them, they insist.

That may be so. But you wonder what the balloters were looking for in 1964 when Gale Sayers finished 12th in the voting.

You can’t help but look down the lists and think “Oops!” on occasion.

For instance, you look down at 1964 and see where Notre Dame quarterback John Huarte won it. You say, “Fine,” but you look further down the election results and you see where Joe Namath finished--are you ready?--11th!

You look down at 1978 when Billy Sims of Oklahoma won the trophy, but you might wonder where Joe Montana could be. He’s nowhere. Not even on the list.

That’s nothing. John Elway didn’t win a Heisman. The best Dan Marino could finish was fourth. The next year, he was ninth.

Quarterbacks have had a hard way to go with us Heisman balloters, anyway. The years we do vote one in--we picked a quarterback named Pat Sullivan from Auburn one year. Heard of him since, have you? Congratulations.

Are you ready to believe Sid Luckman finished third? The all-time great quarterback for Columbia and later the Bears lost out to a 5-foot-7, 150-pounder from Texas Christian, Davey O’Brien.

How about Otto Graham? Generally considered one of the three best quarterbacks of all time, right? Otto lost out in the voting to Angelo Bertelli, the Notre Dame quarterback, no slouch himself, but, it may be safe to say, no Otto Graham, either.

You’ll look in vain for other celebrated quarterbacks. Bob Waterfield, for instance. Norm Van Brocklin. Fran Tarkenton. George Blanda played the most games of any pro in history, 340, scored the most points in NFL history, 2,002. As Red Buttons would say, Didn’t get a dinner!

Bob Griese finished second one year (to Steve Spurrier) and eighth another (to everybody). Troy Aikman had to settle for third (but quarterbacks named Andre Ware, Gino Torretta and Charlie Ward later won the Heisman). Boomer Esiason could only make ninth. And where, oh where! is Terry Bradshaw? John Unitas?

Probably the Heisman’s least shining hour was 1956, when Jim Brown, no less, finished fifth. Jim Brown is all over the pro record books--most years leading the league in rushing yardage and touchdowns, for example. A case could be made he’s the greatest runner in history. Maybe he needed a nickname.

And the pro who scored the most rushing touchdowns in a season until Emmitt Smith last year, John Riggins, was apparently even more overlooked. His name shows up nowhere in the lists when he was running for Kansas. But in the pros, he was third in career rushing touchdowns (behind only Payton, Marcus Allen--a Heisman winner--and Brown).

But they shouldn’t feel too bad. Jerry Rice could only make ninth.

Only two linemen have ever won the Heisman--Yale end Larry Kelley back in the medieval times (1936) and Leon Hart of Notre Dame in 1949. Hart played both ways but would probably be a tight end in today’s formations. Defensive players don’t get a look-in anyway. Dick Butkus did get as high as third.

But the Heisman missed its best chance in 1937 when the Colorado halfback Byron “Whizzer” White could only finish second. He went on to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The Heisman committee blew it. Of course, if he had won the jinx trophy, he might have ended up county counsel somewhere.