The 30 Greatest Heisman Trophy Winners in College Football History

In a year where anyone could still win the award in November, let’s look at what it takes to win the Heisman by evaluating the 30 greatest winners.

In the words of the Heisman Trophy Trust’s mission statement, the award “annually recognizes the outstanding college football player whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity.” There are no hard and fast criteria beyond that, and voters are each tasked with setting their own criteria for determining who fits the bill in a given year.

This season it seems as though Lamar Jackson is beginning to separate himself from the slew of challengers for the Heisman, though the award is never really won until the dust has settled on key games in November. So while the Louisville quarterback looks like the frontrunner at this point, an injury or another loss could just as easily knock him back in the pack of contenders.

With this in mind, we’ve set out to take on the task of trying to figure out a way to rank the Heisman winners. What we have devised is a system that aims to normalize the accomplishments of players across eras in the sport’s evolution, drawing upon several metrics in order to determine a player’s real value in terms of scoring prowess, helping his team win games, and how voters perceived the winner in relation to the competition that year.

So click through as we rate our 30 greatest Heisman winners in college football history. (All statistics are from the Heisman website unless otherwise noted, and take into account only those games before the award was presented.)