Terry Baker, the 1962 Heisman winner as Oregon State's quarterback, found out he won after being called out of engineering class.
"Then I went back to class," Baker recently recalled.No matter who wins this year ? USC is aiming for a Matt Barkley conquest ? there's no doubt that today's Heisman is shinier and louder. It is a combination election, beauty contest and high school musical ? moderated by an Arkansas hog caller.
The trophy mirrors the sport's open-ended ridiculousness.
"It's as silly as college football itself," said Chris Huston, who runs Heismanpundit.com. "College football is all about arguing. It's a never-ending constitutional convention."
The Heisman playing field is as level as the Himalayas. Offensive linemen, for example, need not apply. And it's clear that USC and Notre Dame have certain inalienable rights over Slippery Rock and Vanderbilt.
Like a national title run, a Heisman campaign is a snapshot taken by a myopic. Each season is a snowflake. Peyton Manning's 1997 defeat to Charles Woodson has no correlation to Andre Ware's 1989 victory over Anthony Thompson.
The sport that allowed Brigham Young to win the national title 1984 also permitted Gino Torretta to win the Heisman in 1992.
Catchphrases help ? Sports Illustrated led a hopeless 1985 Heisman charge for a Plymouth (N.H.) State player: "What the Heck, Why Not [Joe] Dudek?" ? but ingenious sloganeering gets you only so far.
In the 1960s, a skinny Notre Dame freshman quarterback at practice raced past South Bend Tribune sports editor Joe Doyle.
"There goes Theismann," Doyle said, pronouncing it correctly as "Thees-mann."
Roger Valdiserri, Notre Dame's legendary sports information director, had an epiphany. Reflecting on the moment recently, he recalled, "No, I said, 'There goes Theismann, as in Heisman.'"
Valdiserri convinced Joe Theismann to change the pronunciation of his name, although the quarterback's best finish in the voting was second in 1970 to Stanford quarterback Jim Plunkett.
"It became big deal," Valdiserri said, "but I didn't spend one cent promoting Joe Theismann. And Joe said, 'Yeah, well, I didn't win it.'"
In 1997, Washington State Coach Mike Price promoted Ryan Leaf by taking foliage advantage of his quarterback's name.
Sports information man Rod Commons, now retired, remembers dispatching office staff to rake leaves around campus.
"They came back with sacks," he said.
A single leaf, nothing else, was mailed to voting members of the media in nondescript envelopes.
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