The Heisman Race is Just Like a Presidential Campaign

Last night, Deshaun Watson walked away empty handed as Bama running back Derrick Henry won the award. The Heisman Race is just like a Presidential Campaign.

For those of you unaware, the Heisman Trophy presentation was last night and running back Derrick Henry came away with the award.

Deshaun Watson finished third in the voting and Christian McCaffrey of Stanford finished second. I want to preface this article by saying, I don’t want to take anything away from Henry, but I want to explain to Tiger fans, rather, why Watson did not win.

With that being said, the Heisman Race is just like a Presidential Campaign.

We all know that voting for the next presidential election is just a little less than a year away. Both parties have a ton of candidates running and there are a bunch of hopefuls to be the next president of these United States. The Heisman Award is just the same.

For example, the Heisman Trophy is based on voters. Some of them are members of the media, some of them are former Heisman winners, some of the are corporate owners and so on and so forth. Each on of those voters have their own opinion on who they believe the Heisman should be.

In most cases, to be honest, those voters already have a preconceived notion of who they want the Heisman to be, which is why so many ballots are turned in before the end of the season. In many cases, the voters don’t even watch the candidates play. Instead, they read statistics, listen to what everyone else is saying, and make their decision based upon that.

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Guess what? Voters have bias, as well. You’d like to think that those voting in the Heisman race do not have bias, but in reality they do. In the same way that a staunch Republican is going to vote for the Republican candidate and a staunch Democrat is going to vote for the Democratic candidate, these voters are the same way.

Take this year’s three finalists. I would be willing to bet if you could run data to see who voted for who (some people announce who they voted for, others do not), you’d find some interesting things to be true.

For example, those that work closer with the SEC or in mainstream media voted for Derrick Henry. I’m not saying this is always the case, but just like a presidential campaign, whoever the media is talking about has the upper-hand. Many voters listen to what the media says and go solely off of what they determine.

Of course, if you do that, you’re going to vote for Derrick Henry because ESPN runs something on him every 10 minutes. The hosts of shows have gone out of their way to boost Henry’s Heisman Hype and make him the front-runner for the award.

Another thing you would find is that those that live out west probably voted for Christian McCaffrey. McCaffrey is the only candidate from the pacific side of America that had a chance to win the award. Therefore, media and corporate members alike over on that side of the United States used their vote on him.