Should Vince Young receive the 2005 Heisman Trophy?

What was only an issue to UT fans five years ago has today become a national debate, only for a different reason (Reggie's forfeiture of the trophy due to being declared ineligible by the NCAA): should Vince Young be awarded the 2005 Heisman trophy? To Texas fans, the year-long hype of Reggie Bush in 2005, fueled generally by ESPN but specifically by Kirk Herbstreit, was an injustice to Vince's candidacy because it unfairly and preemptively anointed Bush over Vince, creating an atmosphere of nationwide consensus that Bush's coronation was inevitable. Ultimately Burnt Orange Nation was vindicated in their belief that Vince was the best player in college football following the events that transpired at the Rose Bowl in January, 2006. In fact, anyone and everyone who saw Texas win the National Championship learned immediately that this was the case, prompting a chorus of declarations that had the trophy been awarded after the season, Vince would have been the indisputable choice.

That Vince was indeed the best player of 2005 (and, many would argue, ever) and should have been the rightful recipient of the award originally has, unfortunately, not been stated enough (or at all) since the Reggie story has surfaced in the past week. That changed last night though, when on the late evening SportsCenter Herbstreit offered a slight modification to his prior stance that the award should be left vacated in light of a Bush confiscation/forfeiture. He now says that he "would have no issue" with the Heisman Trust giving the trophy to Young, because "we all saw what happened on the field" when Vince and Reggie played against one another, and beyond that because many believed that Young's regular season was every bit as dominant (if not more) than Bush's that year. So now we have a preeminent influence in college football media essentially endorsing the award being given to Vince, and though this is a transparent effort by Herbstreit to atone for his hysterical hype in 2005, the effort is commendable and welcome here at Burnt Orange Radio. The Herbstreit endorsement alone is why sports talk radio and television is making the debate a central theme of their programming today. I believe had Herbstreit not offered his (admittedly passive) opinion that the story would have less legs today than it otherwise would have.

But there are many who disagree. Jim Rome, Scott van Pelt, and Stewart Mandel have all categorically stated that Vince should not receive the Heisman. Mandel particularly is an influential print voice who I personally trust a great deal and seldom find myself at odds with. On the other hand, talking heads Skip Bayless and Trevor Matich have both signed off on the idea of retroactively crowning Vince the Heisman winner. There are sure to be many more public opinions forthcoming and I would love it if some of our readers could enlighten us as to what they read and hear in the comments section below.

While I am somewhere between tentative and sturdy in my conviction that Vince (and, just as importantly, the University of Texas) should get the Heisman, I am steadfast in my quarrel with the dissenters, whose primary justification for keeping the award vacant concerns the “rewriting of history.” The claim that a Vince Heisman would create a slippery slope whereby Oklahoma could then claim the 2004 BCS National Championship is tenuous and wrong. Oklahoma and USC played on the field and everyone saw and remembers 55-19 USC. Messing with that objective result would rewrite history, however the Heisman vote is the definition of subjectivity, a popularity contest of the highest order, voted on by hundreds of regional AP writers who are imminently susceptible to media bias and hype. Changing the vote would be less revisionist history than corrected opinion based on new and reevaluated evidence, and on top of that, the original opinion is now clearly void based on the Heisman Trust's own bylaws, which state that all Heisman candidates must be eligible under NCAA rules. Finally, the present accepted wisdom that the vote was effectively rendered bogus by the "you guys got it wrong" statement performance hammered into the national consciousness by Vince that night in Pasadena should be one last reason to feel comfortable that no history would be rewritten by awarding him the trophy.

We would really like to get interactive on this one, so please let us know what you think in the comments section below. Zack and I are doing a lengthy segment on this during tomorrow's broadcast and want to read your comments on the air. So help us improve our show by chiming in on this. Needless to say, this story is large nationally, but huge here in Texas. The University of Texas would most likely welcome the chance to grow its Heisman count by 50%. But is it the right move?

Let us know what you think.