A freshman finally won the Heisman. Should it have happened back in 1999?
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel made history Saturday night, becoming the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy in the history of the 77-year-old award. Freshman weren’t eligible to play until 1972, but that’s still a first in the last 40 years.
Sports Illustrated’s Stewart Mandel had an interesting article late last week about past freshmen who, if there hadn’t been a stigma about voting for such a young player, might have had a chance to win the award. He ranked them, in fact. At No. 1? Virginia Tech’s Michael Vick in 1999.
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Let’s take a look at that year. Wisconsin running back Ron Dayne, who broke the career rushing yardage mark, won the award going away, beating, in order, Georgia Tech quarterback Joe Hamilton, Vick, Purdue quarterback Drew Brees and Marshall quarterback Chad Pennington. Obviously this took place in an era before quarterbacks ruled the voting every year (11 of the 13 winners since have been quarterbacks).
The voting wasn’t close. Dayne got 586 first-place votes. Hamilton got 96. Vick got 25. The point totals — 2,042, 994, 319 — were similarly spaced out.
I think there’s been some revisionist history to say that Dayne won the award strictly for his career achievement. I don’t think that’s the case. (Full disclosure: I was a junior at Wisconsin at the time who covered the team on a part-time basis.) Dayne ran for 1,834 yards and 19 touchdowns that year, averaging 6.1 yards per carry. He led the Badgers to a 9-2 regular season record, a share of the Big Ten title, their second straight Rose Bowl appearance and an eventual No. 4 national ranking, in addition to breaking Ricky Williams‘ career rushing record.
His rushing total that season was second nationally by 16 yards to TCU’s LaDanian Tomlinson. Dayne’s 6.1-yard average was tied for third nationally. And he did it against Big Ten competition, back when that meant something. I can also personally attest that Barry Alvarez removed Dayne early from several blowouts, to the extent that many fans thought doing so would cost Dayne the career rushing record.
Vick’s stats weren’t nearly as eye-popping. although as any Virginia Tech fan will tell you, the quarterback’s impact went far beyond stats. Vick, who did rank No. 1 nationally in quarterback rating, threw for 2,065 yards and 13 touchdowns and ran for another 585 and eight touchdowns, numbers that seem paltry compared to today’s era of dual threat quarterbacks (then again, who do you think they grew up wanting to be?).
Even the other quarterbacks up for the award had better stats. Hamilton threw for 3,060 yards and 29 touchdowns, with another six scores on the ground. Brees, foreshadowing his NFL career, threw for 3,909 yard and 25 scores, albeit on 554 attempts. Pennington, against less than stellar competition, threw for 3,799 yards and 37 touchdowns.
Granted, none of them put together a highlight package quite like this. Vick had a way of impacting a game like no other player in the country, which can’t be discounted. And he did lead Virginia Tech to the BCS title game, with a big helping hand from a standout defense.
As Mandel noted, if the voting had taken place after the Hokies’ appearance in the BCS title game, when Vick stole the show in a near upset of No. 1 Florida State, it might have had a much different look. But all voting takes place before the bowl games. So you can’t factor that in.
Same for NFL success. Obviously Vick has gone on to have a much better NFL career than the two players ahead of him on the list, which makes the vote look more laughable in hindsight. Dayne was slow and, given his size, not a particularly tough runner in the pros, a first-round bust who never lived up to expectations. Hamilton, because of his diminutive size, was a borderline NFL player who got more playing time in NFL Europe and the AFL. But again, you can’t factor that in.
Of course, this whole argument would be moot if the award frontrunner, Florida State receiver Peter Warrick, didn’t wander into a Dillard’s with a scheme to get a huge discount, leading to a two-game suspension. But simply looking at the body of work for the 1999 regular season — and knowing full well that this will be a highly unpopular opinion on a Virginia Tech blog — I still think Dayne was deserving of the award, despite Vick’s accomplishments.
December 9, 2012 - 11:12 AM
As a Wisky Grad I would expect nothing less than the biased and untrue statement at the end of your article. Do us a favor and move back to the land of cheese and write your beat column there cause we don’t want you here.
Overreact much?
How about presenting a counter-argument instead?
Andy, You’ve scratched on old wound! I was upset back then and had forgotten about it over the years. I always thought Vick should have won and he was a much better player. I thought Dayne’s stats were as much a product of the Wisconsin system as were David Klingler’s from Houston.
I just looked at Dayne’s stats on a Wisconsin site and it doesn’t look as if he was pulled in too many games. For the 1999 season I came up with an average of 28 carries a game, through the 12 games. In every game but one, he had at least 20 carries. That’s a lot of carries, but it was a run heavy system Wisconsin used at that time. I also saw that during the 1999 season, he did not run back a single punt and had no kickoff returns. None! That was kind of strange, but I think it was indicative of his lack of speed. He was a bruiser not a speedster, which fit the Wisconsin system perfectly. Still, the multi purpose athlete had arrived by then, so I always thought of Dayne as being one dimensional in his skill set. Another stat I found was that for the entire year he caught 1 pass. That’s right, 1 pass and it went for 9 yards! That doesn’t seem possible, but again it fit with the Wisconsin run first mentality at the time. (Maybe one of the posters here could look that up and correct me if I’m wrong.)
You can’t change the decision now, so I’ll give a belated congrats to Dayne on winning the Heisman. But now that you brought it up, I need another band aid!
Dayne wasn’t a speed/return-type guy. He was a bruiser. Practically a fullback. Catching passes wasn’t his role either.
Yes, he played in a run-first system. But he wasn’t racking up yards against patsies like Klingler and Ware did in 70-10 games. I don’t buy the system argument either. Like Tim Tebow or Cam Newton or RGIII wouldn’t have won the award if not for the offensive system they played in. They were good players in a system that was conducive to their strengths. I think Dayne was the same way.
Dayne had 303 carries that year. (And yes, he would often get in the high 20′s by the third quarter.) UVa’s Thomas Jones had 334 carries. Miami of Ohio’s Travis Prentice had 354. Alabama’s Shaun Alexander had 302. It wasn’t an unusual workload.
I do think Ron Dayne got the “career Heisman” and not the single season Heisman, because there wasn’t any player that really stood out, above anybody else. It was a coin flip. He deserved it, but then again, did he?
His numbers were gaudy, but let’s be real, he got a lot of those against really bad teams.
Murray State, 1-AA team; Ball State, 0-11; Cincinnati, 3-8; Iowa, 1-10; Northwestern, 3-8; even Ohio State was just 6-6 that year. That is over half of the schedule.
Also, I should note that Ricky Williams had 361 carries the year he won the Heisman.
And, to add, two of the best teams he played against, Michigan and Minnesota, both held him under 100 yards.
I think you could pick apart a good chunk of Vick’s schedule that year too. Nobody plays a murderer’s row of competition from beginning to end.
I actually saw more of Dayne in the pros than in college and was very unimpressed. His college numbers had to be helped out by his O-line
Maybe.
Vicks numbers while at VT prove how bad of an offensive system he was in. VT can make almost any offensive player look bad
He wasn’t a good pro back because pro guys are actually big enough to tackle a 240-pound running back. Not so in college.
And yes, his o-line was very good at Wisconsin.
Come on Andy, take those Badger goggles off. Dayne had a season against 6 of 11 teams that won a total of 10 games against 1-A competition, and 6 of those were Ohio State’s.
The schedule fell such that he didn’t play 2 of better Big 10 teams in Illinois and Penn State. He got to play the bottom 5.
Yeah, you can pick Vick’s season apart, but when you do, you have to remember he nearly broke his ankle in game 1, didn’t play game 2, and was gimping in game 3 and really never at 100% until the Sugar Bowl.
I’m not saying Vick should have won over Dayne, but nobody shut Vick down in the big games. Those were his best. They did slow Dayne down in the big ones, most decidely.
He had one very impressive game against a high caliber team, Michigan State.
He had a good season, no doubt, but he definitely won a career Heisman because nobody else stood out. Just accept it. He got the career one that Peyton Manning didn’t get in lieu of Charles Woodson.
You wanted a counter argument – so you got it – and all you can say is ‘oh yeah, well pick the other guys’ schedule/season apart.’
I think we are kind of missing the point on the whole question here. As I read it, the idea is since a freshman won the Heisman this year, should/could it have happened in ’99? So instead of comparing Vick to Dayne, we should be looking at the differences and similarities between Vick and Manziel. Both dynamic freshmen, both with similar styles of play, both on teams with similar styles/history. The big difference in the two situations as I see it is that Manziel had the “giant killer” factor going for him this year. Knocking off Alabama, the defending National Champion and then #1 ranked team was quite a feather in his cap. And you will note that the Heisman hype for Manziel didn’t really get rolling until after that upset. Vick had nothing close to that kind of win on his resume. I would posit that if Florida State had been on Tech’s schedule during the regular season, and the Hokies had pulled the upset behind a Vick performance, Vick would have been the first freshman to win the award, Dayne or no Dayne. Sometimes that one marquee moment can make a huge difference.
So the argument is in his three toughest Big Ten games (Minn, Mich, MSU) he ran for 382 yards and four touchdowns? I know they were sub-par games against Michigan (88 yards, TD) and Minnesota (80 yards, TD) by his standards, but it wasn’t a 12-carry, 20-yard type game.
I mean, Vick threw for only 88 yards and had three picks against a 6-6 Clemson team that year. If you look at one game, anybody can look flawed.
It was a Heisman season with no perfect candidates. But I still think the Dayne pick was defensible.
I agree with Dan, and I’ll add that the pure stats probably played a part in the different way the two were perceived. Manziel had 4,600 yards and 43 touchdowns this year, which is staggering. Vick had 2,425 yards and 20 touchdowns.
It’s obviously a tough comparison. There’s more offense these days. And Vick really was one of the first quarterbacks to have that dual threat capability and do it that well. I certainly would say that Manziel wouldn’t have had the opportunity to be a QB if not for success from guys like Vick.
The only thing I really think needs to be said were two quotes from the title game:
“Is there a re-vote in this Heisman thing?” – Gary Danielson the color man
“Folks, I apologize for not knowing beforehand just how good Michael Vick really is.” – Brent Mushmouth
Did Vick deserve it? Probably. COULD he have won it? Not at that time. The bias against a freshman candidate almost left him off the NYC invite list. Times change.
The West Virginia game made his name and it wasn’t televised. There wasn’t even a remote feed. The final kick was broadcast via telephone to the headset of a guy in the ESPN studio. He first announced that the kick missed. Then announced that the kick was good. I don’t think anyone has actually seen anything other than game film on “the move” that took him on the sideline run. This IS the stuff of legend BUT NOT the stuff of Heismans.
I recall the Beban-Simpson “race”. One nationally televised game is considered to have decided it. USC won. UCLA lost.
Theisman changed the pronunciation of his name to rhyme with Heisman (originally “Theesman”). He lost. At that time it was considered to be all about Sports Information Departments and their campaigns.
Freshman can win NOW because every game can be viewed. That wasn’t so 10 years ago.
The Heisman is about the best college-level player. Like the Wooden Award is for basketball. It has nothing to do with pro-ability or pro-career. If it did, Tebow would have to give his back.
The award once was often won by Army or Navy players. I would say the chances of that now are slim to none.
Like I said, times change. The best thing we can do is remember that the Heisman is a popularity or beauty contest and really has no inherent meaning. I say ignore it.
Oh, and as far as “deserved” is concerned, does anyone remember the year Pat Sullivan of Auburn won? There was no tradition of invites to NYC and the Downtown Athletic Club yet. Live coverage of the announcement was a NYC market only telecast and this was the first time they tried it.
But there was guy in the club waiting for the outcome when the winner was announced. His name was Ed Marino. He played at Cornell and had set new records for rushing (post OJ). He was a NY area darling and they were so convinced he’d win they had him at the club. Ed was from New Milford, NJ and it was a short drive.
When Pat Sullivan won they were so suprised they didn’t know what to do. So they called Pat’s home and had to do a 3 minute interview by phone. The TV show was an announcer on the phone with the Sullivan house and an audio feed only on speaker. They didn’t do live TV of it for years after and the onlyreason they did it that year was because the NYC media expected Marinaro to win.
For you younger folks you may remember Marinaro from roles on “Hill Street Blues” or “Sisters”. He had a short NFL career due to injury and turned to acting.
Times change.
Sorry, a typo. Ed Marinaro is correct.
To me, the question between Dayne and Vick is who meant more to their team? Could Wisconsin plug in a different back that year and still be as successful? My answer – Maybe. Could VT plug in a different QB that year and be as successful? My answer – No.
Winner should have been Vick.
Zman – Yes that WVU game was televised, but just regionally on CBS Big East package. I still have a old tape of that game.
I just hate that the Heisman has become a “moment” award. Isn’t this supposed to be an award for the best player in college football for the SEASON??? Johnny football got his “moment” while beating Alabama and he got lucky that he wasn’t facing the 2011 Alabama D. Lets face it he wasn’t even on the radar before that Alabama game, then hes the runaway favorite after. He got EXTREMELY LUCKY he got Alabama after that LSU game. Half of the SEC would have beaten Alabama after the LSU game.
MVP, MOP, or whatever you want to call the award has gotten out of hand becuase of sportswriters perverting the process. They think becuase of that middle letter being a V or an O it changes how one should vote. The MVP has and should always be the BEST PLAYER IN THE LEAGUE!! Too many times sportswriters just want to negatively campaign for their guy (Miguel Cabrera cant play defense, even though he willingly moved to 3rd and worked his butt off to become a decent 3B, so we should give the award to Trout and his outrageous WAR). If we thought how the Saber-nuts think Ben Zobrist would have TWO MVP AWARDS!! We won’t get into how WAR is such a subjective stat, thats for another day (Wins Above Replacement goes way up if your replacement is terrible!)
I have never understood the criteria for Heisman consideration.
How do you determine which player helped his team most.
No two teams play the exact same schedule against the exact teams with
the same exact player personnel, (injuries, suspensions etc.).
No two teams play in the same exact conditions, (rain, cold, wind etc)
Statistics are no true measure either. Each candidate plays with different
personnel on their teams. Different teams play with different philosophies,(strong run game, run and shoot, fun and gun etc.
How can one actually say that any one player helped his team more than
any and all other players being considered? All players benefit their
respective teams, who does the most, I don’t know.
Michael Vick did not have the exposure that was needed at the time, but he was the best college player that year. He almost defeated Florida State by himself.
Another bad choice was Woodson winning over Manning. It was a joke, the fix was in by the media. Look how those two players have done in the NFL.
Yes, Michael Vick should have won, but not enough people knew of him yet. His identity was just getting known nationally.
Add to my first comment:
Football is a team sport
Football requires at a minimum 11 players per team.
I feel that individual achievement awards can be and
quite often are distracting.
We are seeing more and more kids with the desire to be
a candidate for an award, less and less to be a team
player
“I went to the school that I thought could best prepare
me and showcase my skills for the NFL).
This has become more and more a mantra for NCAA players.
There is no I in team. If you turn team backwards and cut
a couple of unskilled letters, you can make it about me.
The only “me” sports I can think of are singles tennis and
golf.
I so vividly remember that 1999 BCS bowl. I stopped off at the O Club to watch the game on the big screen – people didn’t have them in their homes back then. FSU went out to an early lead and it looked grim so I decided to go home and watch us get taken to the woodshed in private. FSU scored two more TD’s before I could make the 15 minute drive home. Then in the greatest singular performance by any player that year and certainly one for the ages, Michael Vick carried that team like a madman doing things humans could not do. VT didn’t have the national coverage that all teams do these days and it wasn’t until MV got to the pros that the world got to see that the Michael Vick from the National Championship game was not a fluke. He was Superman.
If the voting had occured after the NC game, Michael Vick is the first freshman to win the award. He was just to incredible to ignore. Unfortunately VT was too new to the scene to have had much recognition at the national level. Heck, an undefeated VT barely edged out a one loss Nebraska team to even get to go to the NC game and there were many sports journalists who thought VT was totally unworthy.
I still think VT was unworthy of the National Championship game for the 99 season. A shifty run against WVU along the sidelines and a last ditch desperation kick won over WV and I am not sure they were even ranked that year. Once again Tech had some lucky horseshoes that got them in the national exposure. Vick was fast and that was about it, don’t think he was anywhere nearly as good as some others that year if you want to look at all around players. That is the story of Vick in the pros as well, a good player from the shoulders down but now his legs are starting to go so next year is anyone’s guess.
My counter argument is that nobody electrified college football the way Mike Vick did, he was far and away the most exciting player to lace up cleats that year. Not to mention the fact that he put that team on his back and carried them to the NC Game.
speaking of VT players in the NFL…..did anyone see the great game Wilson had for the Giants
How about we keep the name-calling to a minimum here. I was recently at a bloggers meeting at the newsroom about fostering a friendly place for readers to convene on the blogs.
So let’s cut out the “idiot” stuff. Thanks.
FSU had a quarterback that was 27 years old. FSU had the best player on the team who should have been off of the team and in jail. FSU had a place kicker break curfew at the practices for the game. All of these ” fine citizens ” played for Bowden, and as Bowden often said, ” but he’s a good boy “. SURE.
If I remember correctly, I believe VT had a few players that should have been in jail that year. FSU for sure did not have a monopoly on the jailbirds; there was also Miami. OBTW, I am not a Hokie fan but hats off to David Wilson in today’s game, a lot of folks are happy for him. Too bad that Dallas is going to win that division. The Redskins are done for and the Giant’s remaining schedule is going to be their downfall. That leaves the Cowboys!!!!!!!!!
I’m sure an argument can be made for Dayne and Vick. I didn’t see Dayne play much that year but I did see every snap Vick took. The guy was nothing less than spectacular. Some great plays he made didn’t make the highlight reel. He turned more QB sacks into 3 and 4 yard gains than anyone I have ever seen. I also believe there was more competition for the award in 99 than there was this year. It made it easier for a reshirt freshman to win. Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe got it right on ESPN’s sports reporters when he said if the voters in 99 had had the guts to vote for a freshman, Vick would have won comfortably.
What a joke the Heisman trophy is. A lot of the winners have a hard time in the NFL. It’s a curse to win it and watching the presentation is like watching water boil.
USC>GT
GT 6-8 including a loss to VTs worst team in 20 years
Here is the freshman that should have won it; Emmitt Smith in 1987.
Emmitt Smith reached the career 1,000-yard mark in just seven games, the fastest of any player in college history at the time. In his first college start, he carried 39 times for 224 yards and two touchdowns as the Gators upset No. 11 Alabama, 23-14. He would go on to run for 173 yards against Mississippi State, 184 against LSU and 175 against Temple en route to a 1,341-yard season.
Like M Faulk, Smith finished ninth in the voting as a freshman, behind such running backs as Michigan State’s Lorenzo White, Pittsburgh’s Craig “Ironhead” Hayward, Oklahoma State’s Thurman Thomas and UCLA’s Gaston Green. (Notre Dame receiver Tim Brown took home the trophy.) After an injury-plagued sophomore year, Smith came back to finish seventh in 1989.
The greatest freshman running back of all time was Herschel Walker (1980) …. hands down.
Andy, way back up @15, I don’t disagree with Dayne as the pick, but, because there were no clear cut picks, I do think, without any reservation, that his CAREER carried him over the top. That’s the whole point I am picking on, is your comment that his career had nothing to do with his winning. I say it did.
And, if you want to pick apart that Clemson game, for Vick, again, he was limping, gimping and coming off a very bad high ankle sprain. He had played less than half a game coming into that one.
Had Vick not gotten hurt, and missed 1 1/2 games because of that, and been slowed in the next few because of it, and he, too, and not missed probably another 1 1/2 games because of blowouts (I know he only played one half against Rutgers), he might have had some of those gaudy numbers that get people’s attention, too. That’s part of your comments, he didn’t have spectacular numbers. Well . . . there was a reason, or two.
Again, I’m not saying he should have won it, but Dayne’s single season was suspect, despite the huge numbers.
OK, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough with my previous post about civility on the comments.
Do not call each other idiots or resort to name-calling. I’ll delete it.
Do not swear in your comments. I’ll delete it. A good rule of thumb is not to use any of George Carlin’s seven dirty words. Also, expand that list and use some reason.
Do not make sexual references about other peoples’ mothers and/or extended family. I’ll delete it.
It’s an all or nothing proposition, folks. If one part of the comment doesn’t pass muster, the whole thing goes. Please follow these reasonable rules of posting.
1300 yards? Emmitt Smith greatest season of all time. Heck he should’ve won 2 Heismans that year
Sounds like a lot of the people here have seen Vick play, but didn’t see Dayne play, or vice-versa. Unless one was able to watch them both a decent amount in ’99, I think it’s hard to come up with an unbiased evaluation of their talents since they played:
1. different positions
2. against different competition
3. with different supporting casts
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! He would have benefited playing for the Georgia Bulldogs LMAO
BITTER, THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LEAN TO VICK, HE CLEARLY WAS THE BEST FOOTBALL PLAYER IN THE COUNTRY..SHOULD YOU GO COVER THE BIG WHAT EVER THEY ARE, THAT LEAGUE WITH A COMMISSIONER WHO PUTS NARCISSCISM TO SHAME …THINKING HE CAN PULL CAROLINA TO THE BIG WHATEVER IT IS…..THESE AD,S AND COMMISSIONERS SHOULD GET INTO POLITICS, MAYBE THAT WILL SATISFY THEIR EGOS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!AND QUIT SCREWING UP COLLEGE ATHLETICS…THEY CARE LESS FOR THE STUDENT ATHLETES….THEY CARE FOR THEIR BANK ACCT., IMAGINE ALVAREZ GETTING 1/12 OF THE WISC.S HEAD COACHES SALARY TO COACH IN A BOWL GAME..SINCE HE ONLY MAKES A COOL ONE MILLION PER YR AS AD GREEDY BUM…OVER 200,000 FOE ONE FRECKING GAME…..
the 1999 Hokies were mostly about defense as they led the nation in every statistical category, centered around multiple award winner Corey moore and John Engelberger. The Hokies enjoyed great field position because of the defense. add to that Vick’s ability and the teams they faced facing a three headed attack from a multiple offense. The second best part of the Hokies was the offensive line. That Line helped the hokies lead the nation in rushing.