Heisman Trophy - Controversy and Politics - Regional Bias Controversy

Regional Bias Controversy

A number of critics have expressed concern about the unwritten rules regarding player position and age, as noted above. But over the years, there has been substantial criticism that the Heisman balloting process has ignored West Coast players. From 1981 (Marcus Allen) to 2002 (Carson Palmer), not a single Pacific-10 Conference or other West Coast player won the Heisman Trophy, although two from the Rocky Mountains did, Brigham Young's Ty Detmer in 1990, and Colorado's Rashaan Salaam in 1994. Two Southern California (USC) players have won the trophy in the early years of the 21st century and two won it subsequent to Palmer, but no non-USC player from the West Coast has won since Stanford's Jim Plunkett in 1970. The closest since then have been Toby Gerhart and Andrew Luck, Stanford players who were second in the Heisman balloting each year from 2009-2011.

The West Coast bias discussion usually centers on the idea that East Coast voters see few West Coast games, because of television coverage contracts, time zone differences, or cultural interest. At Heisman-projection Web site StiffArmTrophy.com, commentator Kari Chisholm notes that the Heisman balloting process itself is inherently biased:

For Heisman voting purposes, the nation is divided into six regions—each of which get 145 votes. Put another way, each region gets exactly 16.67 percent of the votes. However, each region does not constitute an even one-sixth of the population. Three regions (Far West, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic) have larger populations than that – and three have less (Northeast, South, and Southwest). In fact, the Far West has the greatest population at 21.1% of the country and the Northeast has the least – 11.9%.