Stanford running back Toby Gerhart sprinted around, blasted through and passed over Notre Dame’s defense in a performance so complete fans chanted “Heis-man, Heis-man” as he left his home stadium that November night in 2009.
In the Big Ten’s first consensus No. 1 vs. No. 2 game in 1985, Iowa quarterback Chuck Long guided the top-ranked Hawkeyes on a game-winning drive to beat Michigan 12-10. Iowa ultimately secured the outright Big Ten title because of that victory.
Texas quarterback Colt McCoy outdueled Oklahoma rival Sam Bradford to win the Red River Rivalry, pounded Texas A&M in the season finale and completed more than 80 percent of his passes seven times during his 2008 season.
All three became Heisman Trophy finalists. All three sat through the hourlong award show, participated in live television interviews and waited anxiously for the moment of truth to arrive.
“The nerves are real,” Gerhart said. “When it came to that final commercial and walking on the stage and they’re about to announce it, obviously, my heart was racing and sweating a little and my fingers crossed that it was my name called and not somebody else’s.”
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“It breaks away for the last commercial right before the announcement, and my heart is just pumping through my chest,” Long said. “We’ll be right back to announce the Heisman Trophy winner.”
Then came the letdown.
“I was a little disappointed,” McCoy said. “I really thought I had a chance to win it the first time I went.”
Auburn running back Bo Jackson topped Long by 45 points to win the closest vote in the first 73 years of Heisman Trophy balloting. McCoy fell short by 122 points to Bradford, with whom he shared the Big 12 title. A year later, Alabama running back Mark Ingram edged Gerhart by 28 points and McCoy by 122 to become the Tide’s first Heisman winner in the tightest vote ever recorded.
Jackson, Bradford and Ingram are enrolled in sports’ most prestigious and exclusive fraternity. The title “Heisman Trophy winner” precedes every introduction for the first-place finisher, and perhaps only Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee matches that status. Another winner accepts his place in college football immortality Saturday night, and another runner-up will become the equivalent of a second son of a football king.
Nearly every finalist is a consensus All-American, and most become future College Football Hall of Fame inductees. But forever they live in the shadow of the winner, if they’re remembered at all. Mostly, runners-up become the answer to obscure sports trivia questions, which Gerhart discovered after countless texts from friends. Long dealt with that fact for more than two decades before Gerhart took that acclaim.
“I became a more famous No. 2 than most guys who are No. 1,” Long said.
What happens to the runner-up after the ceremony?
When the Heisman Trust announces the finalists, the organization arranges their commercial air travel to New York City one day before the announcement and return flights Sunday morning. The Heisman Trust then rebooks the winner’s flight for Monday, after the Sunday dinner gala.
“There’s a reception afterwards for the finalists that do not win the award Saturday evening,” said Tim Henning, Heisman Trust associate director. “Then we have a hospitality suite that they can go in Sunday before they go home. But once they depart back for campus, there’s not much further communication with the runner-up and the other finalists after the actual weekend that they were invited.”
Runners-up still have notoriety on their home campus or among former conference rivals, but nationally they often blend into the background alongside other great players from their era. Only in rare situations does second place achieve long-lasting fame from the broader college football landscape.
The highest-profile contest and controversy came in 1997 when Michigan defensive back Charles Woodson overtook Tennessee quarterback and Heisman favorite Peyton Manning to claim the trophy. It spoke to the sport’s regionalization and how voters sometimes rebel against the clear, almost anointed, front-runner.
No program’s Heisman hopefuls have suffered from regional bias more than Stanford. From 2009 through 2017, the Cardinal featured five second-place finishers. After Gerhart, quarterback Andrew Luck placed No. 2 in 2010 and 2011, and Christian McCaffrey was second to Alabama running Derrick Henry in 2015. Running back Bryce Love finished second in 2017 behind Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield.
Mark Ingram, center, won the closest Heisman vote in history over Toby Gerhart, far left. (Doug Benc / Getty Images)
“I think it’s a real thing, the regionality piece of it,” said Gerhart, who now works as director of field sales for Asurion in Nashville, Tenn. “Being in Nashville in the Central time zone when Stanford comes on at 9:30 at night, I watch maybe half of it, and I’m a Stanford fan.”
The Mannings have their own club as Heisman finalists without the trophy. Both Archie Manning (1970) and Eli Manning (2003) placed third in their years as Ole Miss quarterbacks. Oklahoma has the most runners-up with seven. Notre Dame, Iowa, USC and Tennessee are tied with four, behind Stanford’s six. No Tennessee player has claimed the Heisman, and Iowa has only one, Nile Kinnick, who won it in 1939.
Kinnick’s trophy was used as a prop during a summer marketing campaign for Long in 1985. The athletics staff produced a commercial of an outdoor scavenger hunt with Long seeking the Heisman Trophy as the prize. The Hawkeyes’ first runner-up was defensive tackle Alex Karras in 1957. Karras was the first of three defensive linemen — joining Pitt’s Hugh Green in 1980 and Michigan’s Aidan Hutchison in 2021 — to finish second. Three offensive linemen also finished second. The most recent was Ohio State’s John Hicks in 1973.
The legacy of the Heisman runner-up
Plenty of Heisman acceptance speeches become revered and historic. Penn State running back John Cappelletti choked up while dedicating the trophy to his younger brother dying of leukemia in 1973. Barry Sanders’ father wiped away tears while accepting the trophy on his son’s behalf in 1988 when the Oklahoma State running back was set to play Texas Tech in Japan. LSU quarterback Joe Burrow’s emotional address about his poverty-stricken home region of southeastern Ohio generated heartfelt reactions.
For runners-up, their acceptance speeches vanish immediately after the announcement, if they’re produced at all. Gerhart opted not to write one, which is his standard procedure for all situations. Minutes from his arrival at the Downtown Athletic Club ballroom, Long’s then-fiancee asked him whether he had a speech prepared.
“It was all surreal like, ‘What am I doing here?’” Long said. “I’m a finalist for the Heisman; it’s me and Bo Jackson. I just never thought my wildest dreams I would be at that point.
“I kind of put something together on the elevator, the old elevator speech, right? I had a pen in my pocket, so I wrote some things down on a piece of paper, and at least I had something I was gonna say if I won.”
Gerhart, Long and McCoy entered each ceremony with different mindsets. All of them knew the votes would be close.
“The second time around, as far as expectations goes, we battled through a lot my senior year,” McCoy said. “We got better and better as the year went on. But I didn’t put up the numbers that I did in ’08 just because the games were a little bit closer and tighter.”
There is a residual effect from not winning the trophy, beyond missing future Heisman Trust engagements and pageantry. Perhaps that status could have elevated Gerhart from the second round to the first as an NFL Draft pick, he wondered. It certainly costs runners-up commercial success and revenue, but not their sense of humor.
“I still joke around with my wife, and I’ll be watching college football or something on the couch,” Gerhart said. “The Heisman house commercial comes on, I’ll still sarcastically say, like, ‘That could have been me on there.’”
“The only thing I would tell people was Bo won that Heisman, but I’m the better athlete,” Long said.
Long later experienced a different view of the Heisman as an assistant coach at Oklahoma. In 2000, Long was the Sooners’ quarterbacks coach, and his pupil, Josh Heupel, finished second to Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke in Heisman voting. In 2003, Long coached Oklahoma quarterback Jason White to the trophy.
“That was really a special moment for me,” Long said. “I had the front page of The Oklahoman on my wall of him winning it. There’s a great story behind that. I mean, he really persevered through two bad knee injuries.”
In the process, Long joined White in every activity the Heisman Trust offered, something he could not do in 1985.
“I told Jason, ‘Hey, I finally made it to the dinner.’”
(Top photo of Toby Gerhart: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
