Who cares about the Heisman?

Heisman's relevance has passed
By Bart Wright, Greenville News Staff Writer

Heisman schmeisman.

No offense to the proud tradition and all that, but, like no free beer in the press box, the Heisman Trophy is one tradition whose time has passed.

It still has its own television slot -- sponsored, if I'm not mistaken, by a Japanese corporation -- and it always gets a good run on college football pregame and halftime shows. Worse, newspaper people who vote on the thing write about it all the time, priming the pump, trying to dredge up some interest in an award that is supposed to be given to the best football player in the country when we all know that almost never happens.

We pay attention because we paid attention last year and the year before.

There was a time when it served a purpose, but that was before Strom Thurmond ran for president. The Heisman was first given out in 1935 when you couldn't watch 10 college football games on Saturday, when there were no 24-hour sports television channels, no around-the-clock sports radio formats.

At the time, it was a sensible way to draw some attention to the game and give folks in the hinterlands a name they could associate with the image of the best college player each year. Who was there to disagree? Only a few dozen sportswriters saw even a handful of the candidates.

Today, there are no hinterlands, you can have your satellite plugged in to nothing but sports programming 365 days a year if you live in East Horseshoe, Texas. Everyone who wants to can follow a college team on satellite or the Internet, all year long, every day. Worse yet, most hard-core fans can see more games than the writers who have Saturdays eaten up by attending games, but the writers vote on who gets the award.

As the visibility of the game has increased, the integrity of the award has diminished, first of all because folks understand that it is an award for players at a few positions from a small sampling of elite football factories. The fact that Notre Dame is the only major college football program with its own network television contract, that it operates without penalty as an independent, that the entire bowl structure is geared around its availability and that it also is the school with the most Heisman winners tells you all you need to know about credibility.

I have never voted and never will vote for the Heisman, though there have been many opportunities. There is something inherently wrong about writing impassioned stories concerning the importance of an award and then sitting down and actually participating in the selection of the recipient of the same award.

Accordingly, it is a simple thing to draw a bull's eye on, say, the last three Heisman winners -- Eric Crouch, Chris Weinke and Ron Dayne -- and ask for a show of hands of those who believe in each of those years that there were no better football players in the country. At that point, some Heisman defender will point out that the award sort of got away from the whole idea of being representative of the best player in the country.

Bingo. Please bring a new barrel. All the fish in this one have been shot.

Enjoy the show, if you care to watch it.

I'll be watching something more culturally relevant, Hockey Night in Canada.

 

I can't remember the last time a Heisman winner did something since OJ. And I'm not talking about the murders.

 

Williams, Woodson, Tim Brown, a few others have.

 

its really not a fair award anymore... 9 times outta 10 it goes to a QB or a RB... might as well call it the best QB or RB award... when they start making it the BEST college player by including WR, TE, and Godforbid Defensive players then it'll garner more respect