Final 5 head to New York for Heisman ceremony

Top NCAA football award presented Saturday

NEW YORK — After putting on a show in Death Valley back in October, Clemson’s Deshaun Watson and Louisville’s Lamar Jackson will face off again.

This time in New York with the Heisman Trophy on the line.

The Atlantic Coast Conference quarterbacks who dueled in one of the best games of the college football season were named Heisman finalists, along with Michigan’s versatile star Jabrill Peppers and Oklahoma teammates Baker Mayfield and Dede Westbrook.

The award will be presented Saturday in Manhattan.

Watson finished third in last year’s voting, won by Alabama running back Derrick Henry.

Just like last year, he heads to New York not as the favourite but as the contender coming on strong at the end.

“You just don’t have a lot of twotime Heisman finalists over the history of your program. He is our first, and he’s very deserving,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said in a statement. “I’ve said it before; I believe he is the best player in the nation and has been a great representative of our University.”

Mayfield finished fourth last season, but did not get an invitation to attend the Heisman presentation in New York.

Westbrook and Mayfield are the first teammates to be finalists since Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart from Southern California finished first and third, respectively in 2005.

Peppers is the first defensive player to be a Heisman finalists since Notre Dame linebacker Manti Teo was a distant runner-up to Johnny Manziel in 2012.

Finalists are determined by the margins between vote-getters. The ballots of more than 900 voters, which include former Heisman winners, were due Monday.

Watson entered as the preseason favourite in what looked like a strong field of contenders, but Jackson quickly swept past them all to be front-runner.

He was brilliant for the first two months of the season and Louisville was looking like a College Football Playoff contender.