Ballots go out to Heisman Trophy voters on Monday, so it seems appropriate to look at some Trophy Trivia and Heisman History. It will include Colorado wunderkind Travis Hunter if he becomes the most prolific two-way Heisman winner in 88 YEARS when the 2024 honoree is announced on December 14.
As anyone who follows college football even a little bit should know, the first winner of the award that goes to the “most outstanding college football player in America” was University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger in 1935.
Berwanger, who also played linebacker and returned kicks, was variously called “the one-man football team,” “the Flying Dutchman” and “the Man in the Iron Mask” because he wore a special face guard to protect his nose, which had been broken twice. One hit he delivered left future U. S. President Gerald Ford with a permanent scar under one eye.
In addition to being the first winner of the Heisman Trophy (called the Downtown Athletic Club Award that year), Berwanger also was the first player drafted in the first-ever National Football League collegiate draft, by the Philadelphia Eagles. But he never played pro football.
Berwanger was not overly impressed with his award and allowed his aunt to use the iconic bronze as a doorstop. University president Robert Maynard Hutchins apparently was not impressed either. He eliminated Chicago Maroons intercollegiate football three years later.
(Football was restored as a club sport in 1963 and became a varsity activity six years later. Since 1973 the University of Chicago has competed at the Division III level with the likes of Mount Union (Ohio) and Wisconsin-Whitewater, who together won 15 national titles between 2000 and 2020.)
Berwanger’s successor in 1936 was Yale’s two-way end, Larry Kelley. His exploits compare favorably with the Buffs’ Hunter, though back then, one-platoon football was the norm so playing both ways wasn’t as unusual as it is with Hunter today.
In three seasons of Yale football, Kelley was in action 1.298 of the 1,500 minutes of play. As a senior he on the field all 60 minutes of six games and missed only 15 minutes of the 480 total as Yale went 7-1.
Like Berwanger, Kelley never played pro football.
Future U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Byron White, who was known as “Whizzer” when he was a consensus All-America halfback for the CU Buffaloes, was runnerup to the third Heisman winner, Clint Frank. Kelley’s Yale teammate, Frank also never played pro football. Instead, he became an advertising executive and founded his own agency in 1954.
The most unlikely Heisman winner has to be Ohio State quarterback Les Horvath in 1944. Horvath was a reserve halfback for the 1942 Buckeyes who won OSU’s first Big Ten title that year, under Paul Brown. He graduated at the end of that school year, stayed in Columbus and and entered dental school.
By 1944, though, Brown was coaching the Great Lakes Naval Training Station team, and Carroll Widdoes was Ohio State’s acting coach. Taking advantage of a wartime rule allowing graduate students to rejoin their teams if they had remaining eligibility, Widdoes invited Horvath back.
What a stroke! Horvath led the Buckeyes to a 9-0 record, was named an All-America quarterback, and won the Heisman. It took 56 years, but Ohio State retired his uniform number (22) in 2000.
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Here are some other Trophy Trivia items:
Ten Heisman winners have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, but none is as distinguished as the 1958 winner, who never turned pro. West Point halfback Pete Dawkins was a Rhodes Scholar and achieved the rank of brigadier general during a 24-year military career.
Only one player has ever repeated as Heisman winner. Archie Griffin of Ohio State won back-to-back in 1974-75.
Ernie Davis was the first African American to win the Heisman, in 1961. He died of leukemia before he could play a down of pro football. In the net 38 years, there were 23 Heisman winners of his race. The total stands at 36 through 2023.
Baker Mayfeld, now with Tampa Bay, is the only walk-on to win a Heisman.
And, finally, this:
Both John Elway and Peyton Manning finished second in Heisman voting as seniors, Elway to Herschel Walker in 1982, and Manning to Charles Woodson in 1997. (Bo Nix was third last year.)
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Denny Dressman is a veteran of 43 years in the newspaper business, including 25 at the Rocky Mountain News, where he began as executive sports editor. He is the author of 16 books, nine of them sports-related. You can write to Denny at dennydressman@comcast.net.