The Notre Dame Heisman Boost

When the Artist Formerly Known as the Downtown Athletic Club convenes tomorrow night, the will be handing the 2005 Heisman Trophy to Reggie Bush of USC. And make no mistake about it—the race won’t be close. Despite sharing the evening’s stage with his own teammate and 2004 winner, Matt Leinart, Bush will win by at least 500 points, as fewer voters will decide between the best player on the Trojans while more will split their votes between the best QB headed to Pasadena.

Yet the “boost” of which I refer to is not the questionable push given by Reggie Bush in aiding Matt Leinart across the goal line for the final touchdown in USC’s last-second 34-31 win over Notre Dame. Rather I am referring historically to same-year performances by eventual Heisman Trophy winners against the Fighting Irish. (Still, some observers have noted that without “The Push” and a USC loss to ND, the Heisman candidacies of Bush and Leinart may have taken a backseat to Texas QB Vince Young, since potentially he would remain as the only candidate left in the national championship game.)

It was widely regarded that Carson Palmer’s final regular season game in which he riddled Note Dame with four touchdowns in a 44-13 drubbing effectively sealed his claim to that year’s award. Not to be outdone, two years later, heir apparent Matt Leinart took ND behind his own private woodshed in a five touchdown, 41-10 performance.

I began to wonder if any trends existed between Heisman winners and their performance that year against Notre Dame. A subtle correlation can be extracted by noting that Heisman winners have most recently come from traditional powerhouse programs (USC, Oklahoma, Florida State, etc.), and such programs oftentimes sprinkle their schedules with a marquee match-up or two, in between tough tests against the Appalachian States and Ohio Universities of the collegiate gridiron. Many times that marquee match-up will involve Notre Dame.

Dating back to 1976—the first year after the Heisman Line of Demarcation—Notre Dame has played against the eventual Heisman trophy winner an amazing 13 times in 25 years (ND’s Tim Brown won the award in 1987; Bush makes it #13 this year.)

Here's a breakdown:

Year	Name	School	vs. ND	Game Notes
2005	Reggie Bush	USC	34-31 (W)	15 carries for 160 yards, with 3TDs and one assist; 4 catches for 35 yards; 7 returns for 70 yards.
2004	Matt Leinart	USC	41-10 (W)	24-34 passing for 400 yards, 5TDs and no INTs.
2002	Carson Palmer	USC	44-13 (W)	32-46 passing for 425 yards, 4TDs and 2 INTs.
2001	Eric Crouch	Nebraska	27-10 (W)	14 carries for 31 yards; 6-9 passing for 88 yards, 1TD, no INTs.
1997	Charles Woodson	Michigan	21-14 (W)	4 tackles (3 unassisted).
1995	Eddie George	Ohio State	45-26 (W)	32 carries for 207 yards, 2TDs.
1994	Rashan Salaam	Colorado	41-24 (W)	(Fiesta Bowl) 27 carries for 83 yards, 3TDs.
1993	Charlie Ward	Florida State	31-24 (L)	Florida State went on to win the national championship.
1991	Desmond Howard	Michigan	24-14 (W)	Game featured Howard's highlight-reel endzone TD catch on 4th down.
1981	Marcus Allen	USC	14-7 (W)	Damn that white horse!
1979	Charles White	USC	42-23 (W)	Ran for 261 yards.
1977	Earl Campbell	Texas	38-10 (L)	(Cotton Bowl) Win propelled ND to national championship.
1976	Tony Dorsett	Pittsburgh	31-10 (W)	Ran for 303 yards; Pittsburgh went on to win the national championship.

Of the 13 winners over those 25 years, the respective teams won an amazing 11 times. The formula for success is fairly simple: beat ND, and you’re on your way to Manhattan. One has to go all the way back to 1993 to find an eventual Heisman winner who did not beat ND in their head-to-head match-up. That year’s winner, Charlie Ward, received as a consolation prize the national championship trophy to accompany his Heisman. The only other team loss by an eventual Heisman winner over this time period was 1977, when ND defeated #1 Texas and Earl Campbell en route to their own national championship.

Enemy Surveillance: The University of Auburn

As the regular season began to wind down, a handful of teams began to consider their prospects for post-season bowls, preferably with huge payouts and sunny climates. After Notre Dame escaped from The Farm with a $14 million win, I became interested in how fans of other BCS bubble schools were discussing their respective lots.

Visiting one such online forum—AUTigers.com—one thing became quickly apparent. Notre Dame’s success and the spoils thereof have now fully re-permeated NDHaterNation. Auburn is one school whose team stood to gain greatly (perhaps) from any ND misstep against the Cardinal. One simply look only to the thread being churned out during the course of the ND-Stanford game: over the course of three hours (the game was on ABC, not NBC), giddy AU followers posted FIFTEEN PAGES of content as the game went back and forth until the final seconds.

Even in the throes of defeat via transitive property, Tiger faithful remained unfazed. They then turned their attention to the evildoers responsible for mathematically placing their team at a disadvantage…the BCS. Going into the last weekend of the regular season, it seemed all was well for their undeserving outcast argument. After all, who wouldn’t give props to a schedule that included collegiate juggernauts Ball State and Western Kentucky, both of whom the Tigers easily vanquished.

Alas, their pipe dream began to unravel quite quickly. Georgia knocked off LSU in the SEC Championship, thereby securing the SEC automatic berth. And when Florida State put the hammer to Virginia Tech, another unexpected bid went by the wayside. With two top five teams losing on the same weekend, the path was cleared for other highly ranked teams (e.g. Ohio State, Notre Dame) to further solidify their position amongst the BCS elite.