Since 2013, 45% of Heisman finalists have been QBs of color

You understand progress is happening when issues that was once groundbreaking turn out to be the norm. Fortunately, it’s been a very long time since Andre Ware was the one one.

With the announcement of this 12 months’s class of Heisman Trophy finalists, it implies that 27 quarterbacks have been invited to New York since 2013. However, most significantly, it implies that since 2013, 16 quarterbacks of coloration have been named finalists — 45.7 p.c.

Oregon’s Bo Nix, LSU’s Jayden Daniels, Ohio State’s Marvin Harrison Jr., and Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., will all be vying to take home the most prestigious award in college sports on Saturday — three quarterbacks and a large receiver. If Daniels — who many consider the favorite — or Penix Jr. wins, they’d turn out to be the seventh quarterback of coloration to win it since 2013. In that very same time-frame, 27 finalists in all have been quarterbacks, because it’s proof that it’s virtually unimaginable to win it should you play operating again or huge receiver. Until you’re DeVonta Smith, who received the award in 2020, making him the primary receiver to have that honor since Desmond Howard in 1991.

So, regardless of how loads of us would possibly assume that Harrison Jr. is the perfect participant not within the NFL, his probabilities of successful the award are slim, on condition that 77 p.c of the finalists since 2013 have been the fellows who throw the ball, not those who catch them.

Just like the MVP award within the NFL, the Heisman has been one thing that voters virtually solely give to quarterbacks. And in the identical approach that the face of the quarterback is altering within the professionals, it’s much more obvious within the faculty ranks.

“As I’ve gotten older, it means slightly extra,” Andre Ware said back in 2014. “Whenever you’re the primary to perform something, you’re taking satisfaction in it.” When the previous Houston Cougar received the Heisman again in 1989, he grew to become the primary Black quarterback to ever obtain the dignity.

“To be trustworthy, going by means of the method that 12 months, it by no means actually occurred to me,” Ware told ESPN in the past. Ware walked within the footsteps of Syracuse’s Ernie Davis, the primary Black participant to win the Heisman in 1961. By way of quarterbacks, Florida State’s Charlie Ward got here after Ware, after which there was Ohio State’s Troy Smith, and so forth and so forth.

In 2014, extra historical past was made when Oregon’s Marcus Mariota grew to become the primary Polynesian and Hawaiian to win the award. The tanning of the Heisman had become a real thing.

“I hope and pray that that is solely the start,” Mariota said to his fellow Polynesians when he received the award.

“To younger Poly athletes all over the place, you need to take this as motivation and dream huge and attempt for greatness.”

It will be bizarre if I didn’t acknowledge that the Heisman Trophy has misplaced loads of its luster over the previous years. The domination of quarterbacks, the dearth of defensive gamers being thought-about and workforce success have performed an element in many people feeling just like the award doesn’t really go to the “most excellent participant in faculty soccer.” And whereas which may be true, it doesn’t take away how impactful the award nonetheless is in sports activities and tradition, and the way a lot you may inform has modified inside sports activities and tradition by who retains getting invited to New York Metropolis.