WSJ: Why aren't more Heisman winners successful pros?

I'm sure Deck will find this yet one more reason that Bush should be impeached.

[rquoter]Heisman Is No Key to NFL Glory
Why do so few winners make it in the pros?

BY ALLEN BARRA
Thursday, December 6, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

University of Florida sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow is the odds-on favorite to win the 2007 Heisman Trophy this Saturday as the nation's outstanding college football player. Since the colleges serve as a farm system for the National Football League and Mr. Tebow is the best player in college, he should be a cinch to make it in the pros, right?

Not according to history. In the modern era of the NFL, only a handful of Heisman Trophy winners have enjoyed genuine success in the pro ranks. Consider the following:

• In the past half-century, scarcely one in five Heisman winners has become a major pro-football star. Of the past 50, only four--O.J. Simpson, Earl Campbell, Marcus Allen and Barry Sanders--have gone on to be voted the NFL Most Valuable Player by the Associated Press.

• Only seven of the past 50 Heisman Trophy winners--Roger Staubach, Mike Garrett, Jim Plunkett, Tony Dorsett, George Rogers, Marcus Allen and Desmond Howard--have been starters on Super Bowl-winning teams.

• Three of the past seven Heisman winners--Chris Weinke (2000), Eric Crouch (2001) and Jason White (2003)--are no longer even playing with the NFL. Last year's winner, Troy Smith, who won by the widest margin of any player in Heisman history, is on the roster of the Baltimore Ravens this season but has not yet thrown a pass.

• The last Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback to win a Super Bowl ring was Jim Plunkett in 1981, playing for the Oakland Raiders.

Some feel the reason Heisman winners seldom make it in the pros is simple: The voters didn't pick the best player in the first place. For instance, Jim Brown, by consensus the greatest running back in NFL history, was a three-time league MVP but didn't win the Heisman in college. Neither did such all-time greats as Johnny Unitas, Fran Tarkenton, Walter Payton, Lawrence Taylor, John Elway, Joe Montana and Peyton Manning.

Michael David Smith of Pro Football Prospectus thinks that the failure of most Heisman winners to make it in the pros can be attributed to some basic differences between the college and pro games. "In college football, there's so many different schemes, from the option to the run and shoot, that an incomplete football player can thrive in the right college system. The right college offense can hide a player's flaws, but in the NFL those flaws will be exposed."

Bill Walsh, a college coach for Stanford University and the San Francisco 49ers in the NFL, felt it was often a question of maturity. "Joe Montana won four Super Bowls for us," he told me in a 2003 interview, four years before his death, "but I don't know that he was really the best quarterback in the country coming out of college. I thought he had the potential to become the best."

But many top college players, including some recent Heisman winners, don't have the luck to be drafted by teams that can give them a fair chance to develop. "Football," says Bob Boyles, author of "Fifty Years of College Football," "is the ultimate team-oriented game where a quarterback can't become a star passer without receivers streaking into the open and catching the ball while unsung linemen mount great pass protection."

An example, says Mr. Boyles, is Matt Leinart, the University of Southern California's 2004 Heisman winner, who was considered a can't-miss prospect when he was drafted by Arizona. The difference in the talent level between the USC Trojans and the Arizona Cardinals must have come as a shock to Mr. Leinart. In college he was surrounded by All-American caliber linemen and playing the same backfield with such pro prospects as running backs LenDale White (now with the Tennessee Titans) and Reggie Bush (himself a Heisman winner, now with the New Orleans Saints). At Arizona, Mr. Leinart's supporting cast has been far less imposing; quarterbacking for the Cardinals, Mr. Boyles notes, Mr. Leinart "is sometimes hit more times in a single game than he was in an entire season at Southern Cal." (This season he has been on the injured reserve list since Oct. 10.)

Reggie Bush is experiencing a similar fate with the New Orleans Saints. In 2005, at USC, Mr. Bush had what is regarded as one of the most remarkable seasons in college football history, averaging 8.9 yards per carry. So far in two years with the Saints he has averaged just 3.7. (After 12 games, the Saints are just 5-7.)

Then there are some Heisman winners who perform well despite the teams they're drafted onto but don't get the recognition they deserve. Mr. Walsh noted that Tim Brown, the 1987 Trophy winner, "played 16 years for a Raiders team which only won a dozen games more than they lost. Yet he's second on the all-time list for receiving yards. If he'd have been lucky enough to be drafted by a team with great passers like Joe Montana and Steve Young, who's to say he couldn't have surpassed Jerry Rice [the all-time leader]?"

For some students of the college game, though, the question of why Heisman winners don't have much success in the pros is beside the point. Let's give the final word to legendary college-football writer Dan Jenkins, who says: "The Heisman shouldn't have anything to do with the NFL. It should be awarded strictly on a guy's performance as a collegian. It's not like a player should have to justify his Heisman by becoming a pro star."

Mr. Barra writes about sports for The Wall Street Journal. [/rquoter]