Your 2017 winner of the September Heisman is Penn State running back Saquon Barkley.
Penn State’s Saquon Barkley is your 2017 winner of the September Heisman Trophy
Congratulations to Bryce Love and Baker Mayfield, who were finalists for the made-up award.
Photo by Matthew Holst/Getty Images
Do you know about the September Heisman? It’s a made-up award that’s even more difficult to describe than the actual Heisman, going to the player who most captured college football’s imagination during its least meaningful month, piling up stats during our glorified preseason, and maybe also playing well in a big game or two.
You could make a case for Oklahoma QB Baker Mayfield or Stanford RB Bryce Love (or a defender or lineman, if you wanted to play sci-fi Heisman), but Barkley’s the Heisman favorite in the betting markets after leading the country in highlights, having one Heisman Moment-y performance (Iowa), and putting up hilarious numbers (192 yards from scrimmage per game) only eclipsed by Love’s. His worst game so far included a 100-yard kick return, a passing touchdown, and a busted play turned into a 36-yard gain. He also had a Heisman Hurdle.
A few things:
- The winner isn’t necessarily going to win the actual Heisman. Despite how much we worry in this sport about confirmation bias and hype cycles, that’s almost never the case, as you can see below.
- But the winner isn’t necessarily overrated. The whole notion of exploding against bad teams and then not following through with a Heisman-winning performance might seem to indicate this whole thing is a pejorative, but I disagree. This is all a way to enshrine presumption, rather than to mock a player who had good games early.
- Since it’s meant to be an even sillier version of the Heisman, it doesn’t always reward the actual best performance. Love is the one skill weapon who’s had better numbers, having put up more yards on fewer touches against a comparable schedule, but plays on an easily ignored West Coast team that’s lost games and hasn’t been in any attention-grabbing primetimers.
Here’s how the last decade’s looked, per our calculations:
- 2008: Sam Bradford, Oklahoma QB
- 2009: C.J. Spiller, Clemson RB
- 2010: Denard Robinson, Michigan QB
- 2011: Case Keenum, Houston QB
- 2012: Geno Smith, West Virginia QB
- 2013: Johnny Manziel, Texas A&M QB
- 2014: Kenny Hill, Texas A&M QB (Marcus Mariota was technically the favorite all along, but Hill was as September Heisman as it gets.)
- 2015: Leonard Fournette, LSU RB
- 2016: Lamar Jackson, Louisville QB
- 2017: Saquon Barkley, Penn State RB
More college football
- Let’s also explore Love’s wonderful Stanford running game.
- ICYMI, here’s Steven Godfrey’s big story on Troy’s Neal Brown, who just happened to beat LSU.
- Clemson remains a really unusual kind of elite team.
- THIS WEEK IN SCHADENFREUDE, where Tennessee and LSU fans are having a GoFundMe buyout race.
- UTEP’s already in the head coaching market. Here are seven names to know, and hey, that Mike Price is taking over as the interim.
- Michigan will send out backup QB John O’Korn vs. Michigan State.
- After Washington State beat USC, Pullman police responded to at least eight different couch fires. That’s one couch fire for every 4,200 people who live in Pullman.
- A fine argument for UTSA’s Frank Wilson as the next head coach at Ole Miss.
- At least 91 teams are out of the College Football Playoff race.
- LSU’s top recruit decommits, and this is fine.
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