Caleb Williams is the latest Heisman winner – and deservedly so. But does the award mean as much as it used to? McElroy outlines a few ways we can make the Heisman award better. Plus coaching changes and the fan mailbag.
0:00 Cold Open
1:50 McElroy breaks down what can make the Heisman better
20:15 Did You Know – Heisman is a QB award
20:40 Army Navy recap
23:10 Navy looking for a new coach
25:00 Stanford hires a new coach
27:00 Did You Know – Tennessee is looking for an Orange Bowl win
27:40 Mailbag – Transfer QBs, what do they look for
31:30 Mailbag – Confidence in bowl picks
33:10 Did You Know – Army Navy – Take the UNDER
33:50 Final Thought
✔️Subscribe to ESPN+ http://espnplus.com/youtube
✔️ Get the ESPN App: http://www.espn.com/espn/apps/espn
✔️Subscribe to ESPN on YouTube: http://es.pn/SUBSCRIBEtoYOUTUBE
✔️ Subscribe to NBA on ESPN on YouTube: http://bit.ly/SUBSCRIBEtoNBAonESPN
✔️ Watch ESPN on YouTube TV: http://es.pn/YouTubeTV
One of the Heisman voters with whom I worked had the stones to snub the finalist from our market who ran for 2000 yards, and voted for Antwaan Randle El.
Not everyone's a shill. Perhaps it's telling that Greg seems to believe so many are.
TO RECAP (Because god only know I wouldn't necessarily want to read all that I typed below if I was on this comment board):
1) SHRINK THE VOTER POOL! Sounds good. No solution regarding by how much, who would vote and who would choose who votes. And no case made for why this would improve anything.
2) GET RID OF THE REGIONS! Sure. It's a little archaic but, again, there was no case made for how that would change how voters vote or how it enhances the award's rep. Most people have no idea that voters are tied to regions to begin with, and those affiliations have nothing to do with how they vote. At least when Greg votes. Everyone else is a partisan hack who we can't trust. We can only trust Greg. After all, he's 34.
3) EXPAND THE BALLOT FROM 3 TO AT LEAST 5: The main thrust here seemed to be that it will make people feel better about losing the Heisman – which they already know they're not going to win – if they are at least allowed to lose it in front of a national television audience. No argument was made that it would make the award show more interesting. Not when we already know – as we always have – that it's probably just 2-3 guys who have any shot of winning it to begin with.
4) HAVE LESS FOCUS ON PLAYOFF TEAMS/QUARTERBACKS: This of course ignores the fact that roughly half of the top 10 players receiving votes every year are neither quarterbacks nor on teams that were genuinely in the playoff hunt when ballots had to be cast. Regardless, I'm pretty sure quarterback is still the most significant position on the field, yet last year's runner up was a DL and the winner the previous year was a WR. Note: This year was a bit of an outlier, with 8/10 top vote getters being QBs.
I know. Long for a recap. If you need some sleep material, feel free to read below. It's kind of just note-taking.
********************
6:00 – Faulk over Toretta … interesting. Toretta was not a Manning-like college player and didn't do much in the League, but he DID lead Miami to an 11-1 mark and was top 5 in passing yards and clustered among about nine guys in TD passes and other passing categories. Faulk led the nation in rushing yards, but Garrison Hearst – who finished behind Faulk – managed to finish within 85 yards of Faulk on about 35 fewer carries. Actually, Faulk was 14th in yards/carry that year in leading the Aztecs to a gaudy 5-5-1 mark.
9:00 – Here we go! All the "fixes"!
9:30 – SHRINK THE VOTER POOL. Sounds good!
9:31 – The fact that newspapers in the 30s and 40s were serving as a promotion wing for college football doesn't actually mean they were covering the sport or educated in it any better than people voting now. A pretty good argument can be made that they had LESS access to comprehensive information than some rando in 2022.
9:32 – So … the sport doesn't need all of those voters to promote it, because everyone knows what it is now and it doesn't need promotion, but we need to make it a big deal again. With you so far.
11:00 – Being honest about your possible biases doesn't mean you will follow them in your voting. I guess it's wrong if they admit to biases, and would be much more noble if they kept those to themselves and continued to vote the way they currently do? Is there a point here somewhere? And from what we're being told about "checkers," I'm not aware there is any requirement that they check in with the voter on the regular. They may just check the obits online to make sure you're not dead.
11:30 – Regardless of how widely spread it's played, college football is absolutely a regional sport. Remove it from the West Coast, New England and North Mid-Atlantic and you'd be able to hear a mouse fart. Remove the Midwest and South/South-Central and networks would collapse. You can watch men's volleyball throughout the country as well. Get rid of Hawaii and California and you lose an overwhelming majority of national title teams. But it's still a "national" sport.
12:15 – GET RID OF THE REGIONS – Yeah. Seems archaic enough to dump.Then again, what on EARTH does where your vote is anchored have with how you vote? Greg even admits it makes no difference, and what exactly does this do to raise the profile of the award?
13:30: – EXPAND THE BALLOT FROM 3 TO AT LEAST 5 so that the guy you think isn't good enough to be in the top 4 still has a chance? Contrary to what's being pled here, can anyone remember the last time they thought there were more than 2-3 guys deserving of the Heisman? It's like asking when the last time was that more than 3 teams should legitimately be able to claim they are the best team in the country heading into the playoff. And, even more so than with the playoff, expansion just means that the last names are just there to fill out the chairs- not to compete for the trophy. And, again, what does having more Heisman losers sitting in New York have to do with raising the profile of the trophy? I don't believe raising their self-esteem accomplishes that. And a guy who finishes 4th finishes 4th regardless of whether he gets an invite. He can still brag on that.
16:30 – HAVE LESS FOCUS ON THE PLAYOFF TEAMS: I'm not so certain that putting a little more spotlight on schools in the playoff hunt, then possibly narrowing THAT down to the position that happens to be the most important in the sport, period, is necessarily a problem that needs to be addressed/overcome. Half of the top 10 vote getters this year were on teams that had no chance of making the playoff in the final couple of weeks. The No. 3 vote getter last season was from Pitt. About half of the players the year BEFORE were also on teams out of the hunt. That season, a wide receiver who was among four of the top 10 who were NOT QBs won it. Five of last year's top 10 were not QBs, including the No. 2 vote getter. I'm thinking a lot of the crying is because this year it was 8/10 QBs and because we probably didn't have ANYONE really standing out as someone who was the best in the sport. I'm not hearing the long list of players at other positions who should have been in there.
18:30 – So value has nothing to do with your win-loss record, but for some reason we still keep score. It's always easy to say that about running backs, isn't it? Maybe that's why the QB has a higher profile regarding these awards. And in many cases, there's a very good reason the offense includes so much running.
19:00 – All love to Hendon Hooker – every tout's hot take regarding the Heisman seating chart – but while no one was really predicting how good Tennessee would start the season, there was already talk about how well they'd been building the program before the first kickoff. They were already pretty much expected to possibly win 8-9 games. They've won 10 so far. He certainly played a large role, but he did not bring about this renaissance.
Rex Grossman should have won it.
I agree with your points, Greg, but the main thing for me to care more for the award is to make it more accessible for other positions. People continue to suggest the Heisman is for the best player on the best team in CFB, however, I think the award should go to the best overall player in CFB. It's criminal that Suh in '08 didn't win the award. It's criminal that more lineman, offensive and defensive, aren't considered. It's criminal that defensive players whatsoever can't even sniff the award. The award is mostly a RB and QB centered and it simply shouldn't be that way. With as many voters that the award has, perhaps those voters need to stop watching where the ball moves on their TV's and instead go to the games and pay attention to everywhere else. Give the Heisman to the most dominant player, one who cannot be stopped on a game-by-game basis, one, who without their help, their team wouldn't stand a chance.
Investing in crypto now should be in every wise individuals list, in some months time you'll be ecstatic with the decision you've made today
Nobody cares about the Heisman.
It’s good how it is. White people wanna centralize the power so they o my gotta control a handful of guys. Heisman didn’t lose luster. White guys tiered of losing to these amazing dual threat black guys so often😂
Let the players choose.
I am interested in how the 900 would order the CFP top-4.
Bad take on Charles Woodson. He was absolutely the most OUTSTANDING player…
It's become who is the most exciting and/or popular QB on a good or great team award. It has nothing to do with who is actually the best player
Suh should've won it in 2009
Two things that needs to be changed with the Heisman:
1. Get rid of the voters that are not associated with college football! CFB doesn’t need biased voters who will only vote for their favorites regardless of what happens on the field. Some of the media members don’t even watch the games. Makes 0 sense to give them a vote!
2. Split the Heisman into 2 awards for both Offensive and Defensive players. I know Charles Woodson won it as a defensive player but that was decades ago in a completely different era of football. Realistically, they may never give a defensive player a fair chance to win it again and there is no fair way to compare defensive stats with offensive stats. If the NFL gives out MVPs for both offense and defense, why can’t the Heisman do the same?
The Heisman is a glorified offensive player award, QB and RB preferred. For Defensive players, unless you play all three phases of the game, and non-P5 players, thanks for playing.
A voter is partisan is outspoken about their partisanship. How is that going to change if they keep it to themselves?
It’s become solely a QB award. And rarely are they the best player.
Could you cry any harder that a USC player won?
The voting needs to take place after the entire season is done. That way players like Trevor Lawrence don't get screwed out of it like in 2018. They also need to open it up for different categories. Literally, only a QB, RB or WR will ever win it.
It's lost its luster from Eric crouch winning the Heisman and finally killed it when they took Reggie bush's Heisman and didn't even give it to Vince Young! Screw the Heisman.
Fix the espn flip flop biased “analyst” culture first