Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/847744
Heisman-contending duos are hardly a rarity 2 0 1 7 S E A S O N P R E V I E W Having two players from the same team in the top 10 of the Heisman Tro- phy voting is not as uncommon as one may think. There have been many dual team =nishers in the 81 years of the Heisman, starting in its second year. Yale's senior end Larry Kelly was the winner in 1936 with a landslide 231 votes to the 47 earned by runner-up Sam Francis, a Nebraska fullback. Kelly's teammate, junior quarterback Clint Frank, was =?h with 33 votes. Frank won the award the following year with 524 votes, with Colorado running back Byron "Whizzer" White – the future U.S. Supreme Court justice – getting 264 votes. Then in 1938, Texas Christian quarterback Davey O'Brien received 510 votes to outpace Pitt running back Mar- shall Goldberg (294). One of O'Brien's TCU teammates, o>ensive lineman Ki Aldrich, had 48 votes to rank eighth. Voting procedures changed in 1951, al- lowing the selection of =rst, second and third in the balloting with a point di>er- ential in each category and the winner declared on the total accumulation of points. Last year, when Louisville quarterback Lamar Jackson =nished ahead of Clem- son QB Deshaun Watson (2,144-1,524 points), a pair of Oklahoma players =n- ished third and fourth: quarterback Baker May=eld (361 points) and wide re- ceiver Dede Westbrook (209). Having three teammates on the =nal ballot is more of a rarity, particularly in the past 50 years. When Oklahoma run- ning back Steve Owens won the trophy in 1969, three Ohio State players were in the top 10. Quarterback Rex Kern was third (856), running back Jim Otis sev- enth (121) and defensive back Jack Tatum 10th (105). In the 2004 Heisman voting, three sets of teammates =lled the 10 slots, with two combos in the top =ve splitting the =nal vote. Southern California quarter- back Matt Leinart won it with 1,325 points, while the Trojans' tailback, Reg- gie Bush, =nished =?h with 597 points behind the Oklahoma duo of running back Adrian Peterson (second with 997) and quarterback Jason White (third with 957). California's pair, running back J.J. Arrington at No. 8 and quarterback Aaron Rodgers at No. 9, had 289 and 209 points, respectively. The next season, Bush earned the Heisman with 2,541 points over Texas quarterback Vince Young (1,608), with Leinart third (797). That was also the year that a Penn Stater showed up in the top 10: senior quarterback Michael Robinson at No. 5 with 49 points. –L.P. he said. "We got drafted early because we could show certain things we could do and we moved on from there." Different circumstances Twelve years later, the situation was a little bit different for Carter, Collins and the 1994 offensive unit as it went through preseason drills. In 1993, Penn State ended the 106-year-long independent era when it began its inaugural season in the Big Ten Conference. The Lions won their first five games that year, but it was the emergence of a new and virtually untested redshirt junior quarterback at midseason that helped establish them as championship contenders in '94. Still hampered by a hand injury that he had suffered in the summer of 1992, Collins didn't play in the first two games of '93, and even after becoming the starter two games later, he and the offense stum- bled. The team seemed doomed to an 8-3 record at the end of the regular season as it trailed Michigan State, 37-17, in East Lansing with two minutes left in the third quarter. But the Lions blitzed the stunned Spartans for 25 unanswered points and won, 38-37. That Michigan State shocker seemed like a fluke early on New Year's Day in the Citrus Bowl. Behind quarterback Heath Shuler, the Heisman runner-up, heavily favored Tennessee already had a 10-point lead six minutes into the first quarter, and Penn State seemed listless. That quickly changed. By halftime, the Lions had a 17- 13 lead and they dominated the second half in a convincing 31-13 victory. Those back-to-back pyrotechnic wins propelled the '94 team to No. 9 in the major presea- son polls and moved Carter and Collins into the periphery of Heisman conversa- tions. Their mindset was nearly a carbon copy of the Blackledge-Warner thought process, at least as far as the team concept was concerned. YR NAME POS FINISH PTS WINNER/POS/SCHOOL PTS 1959 Richie Lucas QB 2nd 613 Billy Cannon, RB, LSU 1,929 1968 Ted Kwalick E 4th 254 O.J. Simpson, RB, Southern Cal 2,853 1969 Mike Reid DL 5th 297 Steve Owens, RB, Oklahoma 1,488 1971 Lydell Mitchell RB 5th 251 Pat Sullivan, QB, Auburn 1.597 1972 John Hufnagle QB 6th 292 Johnny Rodgers, RB, Nebraska 1,310 1973 John Cappelletti RB 1st 1,057 – 1978 Chuck Fusina QB 2nd 750 Billy Simms, RB, Oklahoma 827 1982 Todd Backledge QB 6th 108 Herschel Walker, RB, Georgia 1,026 Curt Warner RB 10th 40 1986 D.J. Dozier RB 8th 31 Vinny Testaverde, QB. Miami 2,213 1989 Blair Thomas RB 10th 12 Andre Ware, QB, Houston 1,073 1994 Ki-Jana Carter RB 2nd 901 Rashaan Salaam, RB, Colorado 1,743 Kerry Collins QB 4th 639 1997 Curtis Enis RB 5th 20 Charles Woodson, DB, Michigan 1,815 1999 LaVar Arrington LB 9th 17 Ron Dayne, RB, Wisconsin 2,042 2002 Larry Johnson RB 3rd 726 Carson Palmer, QB, Southern Cal 1,328 2005 Michael Robinson QB 5th 49 Reggie Bush, RB, Southern Cal 2,541 P E N N S T A T E ' S T O P - 1 0 H E I S M A N T R O P H Y F I N I S H E R S