College Football: Top 10 Group of Five Heisman Trophy candidates for 2020

The Heisman Trophy is the pinnacle of individual achievement in college football and the Group of Five has some guys who could win it in 2020.

If you grow up dreaming of playing college football, chances are you those dreams centered around two thoughts: winning a national championship and shaking the hands of past Heisman winners before hoisting the trophy yourself.

Wining the Heisman automatically puts you in the group of the most elite players in college football history. Doak Walker, Earl Campbell, Bo Jackson and Tim Tebow are just some of the legends that have claimed the trophy. Of course, there’s one winner that’s above everyone else, and that’s the only two-time Heisman winner in the trophy’s 85 year history, Archie Griffin.

Group of Five players making the top 10 in Heisman voting isn’t as rare as you may think. In the 2010s it happened 14 times with finishes as high as third. But to find a Group of Five winner, you’d have to go all the way back to a conference that doesn’t even exist in the football world anymore. BYU’s Ty Detmer claimed the trophy in the Western Athletic Conference by just 300 votes over Notre Dame’s Rocket Ismail. Prior to that, Navy’s Roger Staubach won in 1963.

In 1989, Houston’s Andre Ware won, and while today not a Power Five program, the Southwest Conference would have been considered a power conference.

Going up against talent such as Trevor Lawrence and Justin Fields, it’s going to take a special talent to claim the trophy from a smaller league. But don’t rule the smaller programs out. The Group of Five is loaded with talent this year, some of them good enough to start at any program in the country.

If the Group of Five wants to claim its first Heisman Trophy in 30 years, one of these ten players will be looked upon to bring the trophy home. Note that the list is in alphabetical order by school.