The Heisman Trophy Curse
Welcome to Sports Center’s series on urban legends in sports. Today, we will look at the curse, or jinx, if you prefer, of winning the Heisman Trophy. This urban legend really needs to be split into two parts to do it proper justice. The first part of the curse is that the winner of the Heisman Trophy is almost guaranteed to fail in the NFL. The second part is that if you win the Heisman Trophy and are on a team who will be playing for the national championship, you are destined to lose the game.
We will start with the NFL part of the curse first. Since 1989, when then-University of Houston quarterback Andre Ware won the award, only 6 of the Heisman Trophy winners are playing or have had any success in the NFL, those players being Carson Palmer (2002), Chris Weinke (2000), Ron Dayne (1999), Ricky Williams (1998), Charles Woodson (1997), and Eddie George (1995), with only 3 of those players currently starting or getting any significant playing time. Many Heisman Trophy winners go high in the NFL Draft (Andre Ware and Carson Palmer), but just as many end up in the lower rounds of the draft(Eric Crouch and Chris Weinke) or go completely undrafted(Charlie Ward).
This brings up this question: why do so many of the Heisman Trophy winners fail with their NFL careers? Is it truly a curse, or just a mere coincidence? Our experts here at ESPN say it is just coincidence. The only thing that this supposed curse proves is the difference in talent level and size between the NFL and the collegiate level. In the NFL, everyone is fast and strong, not just a few players on each team, like it is in college. Since the NFL only has 32 teams, only the best of the best make it, and talent is far less strung out, unlike the college game, where there are hundreds of teams competing for the best players. So, we would have to say to those of you worried about ruining your NFL career by winning the Heisman Trophy, do not worry; you can win the Heisman Trophy and still have success in the NFL (see Bo Jackson, Barry Sanders, and Tim Brown, just to name a few), just do not expect it to guarantee your success!
Moving on, the latter part of the Heisman Trophy curse is as follows: if you win the Heisman Trophy and you are on a team who will play for the national championship, you are going to lose the game. This part of the supposed curse is harder to disprove. Since the BCS was implemented in 1998, Heisman Trophy winners have played in 3 of the 6 games, all of them being quarterbacks (Jason White, Eric Crouch, and Chris Weinke), and all 3 of their teams lost in the championship by more than a touchdown. In fact, they all tend to play very poorly. The best example of this is in 2000, when Chris Weinke and the high-powered Florida State Seminole offense could not even move the ball, much less put a single offensive point on the board in the Orange Bowl, which was won 13-2 by the Oklahoma Sooners and their Heisman Trophy runner-up quarterback Josh Heuple.
This curse goes beyond recent BCS history as well. In fact, if you win the Heisman Trophy and play for the Miami Hurricanes, you are destined to lose the championship game. Miami’s 2 Heisman Trophy winners, Vinny Testaverde (1986) and Gino Torretta (1992) both lost the national championships. In the last 20 years, only Danny Wuerffel (1996) has won the national championship game after winning the Heisman Trophy. That year, Wuerffel’s Florida Gators beat their in-state rival Florida State Seminoles in the Sugar Bowl. This curse is not confined to championship games only. In the past 30 years, Heisman Trophy winners have lost more than half of the bowl games they played in, not just the national championship game. So, is this a real curse, simply just a good old case of bad luck? Judging from all of the facts, there may just be more to this part of the curse than the first part.
We got to speak with a Heisman Trophy winner, who chose not to reveal his identity, and he said that he would have turned down the award if he had know the extent to which the trophy would ruin his life. He had a horrible ending to his college career, followed by not even being drafted by an NFL team. He did make camp, but never set foot on an NFL playing field. He now sells insurance in his hometown. Who would have ever thought this would be the life of a Heisman Trophy winner?
So what is the moral of the story? Stay away from the Heisman Trophy! Join us next time for part 2 of our series on urban legends in sports, where we will take a look at the dreaded Sports Illustrated Cover curse.
I included this story in my storybook for a few reasons. The first reason is that it is one of those curses and jinxes that you do have to take a couple of looks at, just because of the number of times it has struck in history. The second reason I chose this story is because of the way the Oklahoma football season ended last year, with Jason White winning the Heisman Trophy and then losing to LSU in the Sugar Bowl. I did not really change the stories at all; I just tried to present them in the form of a Sports Center telecast. I tried to present it in a similar way to the way ESPN presents stories like this.
“Heisman Award Winners”
Link: http://www.herff-jones.com/awardwinners_frameset.html (Herff-Jones)
“The Heisman Trophy: Fifteen Years as College Football’s Albatross”
By: Reid Kerr
Link: http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1563296&nav=1TjFJezE (KLTV.com
Sports, Tyler, TX)
“Miami: Beware of Heisman Jinx”
By: Kelly Whiteside
Link: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/2002-12-09-miami-heisman-jinx_x.htm
(USAToday.com Sports)
“Our Top Five Modern Heisman Busts”
By: Joe Concha
Link: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3704033 (MSNBC.com Sports)