Heisman Curse

The Heisman Curse is a term coined to reference a two-part assertion of a negative future for the winning player. The "curse" supposes that any college football player who wins the Heisman Trophy will lose his subsequent bowl game. Since 2000, only six Heisman winners (Carson Palmer, Matt Leinart, Mark Ingram, Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, and Johnny Manziel) have gone on to win their following bowl game, with Leinart's win at the 2005 Orange Bowl being later revoked and removed from records due to multiple rule violations by USC. The trend of post-award failure has garnered the attention of the mainstream media. Additionally, the Heisman Curse asserts that in most cases a Heisman winner will have either a poor career in the NFL, or in fact not even see such a football career at all.

The "curse" does not imply that only Heisman winners have failed careers, only the irony behind college football's best underperforming after the award is given. However, while there are numerous counts of players who underperformed after winning the award, an equal number of players have gone on to see great success, evidence that the "curse" is more of an amusement than a reality.

While there is no scientific evidence that a curse actually exists, there have been observed trends regarding voter selections. Some see the trend running back decades to other players, but it has most famously been observed since the 1990s. The accepted logical explanation for the discrepancy between success and failure of Heisman winners is that the people who pick the Heisman are sportswriters and former Heisman winners. This might mean that they vote for a winner based on reputation, without seeing him or really studying him, basically a qualitative approach. On the other hand, the people who pick players for the NFL are talent evaluators. They study tape, they interview players and they put them through workouts where their strengths and weaknesses can be quantified.