Corral could break Mississippi Heisman hex
OXFORD — Ole Miss quarterback Matt Corral is the next challenger in a long line of stars attempting to bring Mississippi its first Heisman Trophy.
Corral is the multi-threat quarterback leading No. 9 Ole Miss (6-1, 3-1 SEC) and its electric offense with 15 passing touchdowns, nine rushing touchdowns and 341 yards of total offense per game through his first seven games. Along with Alabama quarterback Bryce Young and Ohio State quarterback C.J. Stroud, Corral is one of the top contenders to win this year’s Heisman Trophy.
One Mississippi native (LSU running back Billy Cannon, 1959) has won the Heisman Trophy, but no one representing a Mississippi university has ever won. Given that Mississippi universities and junior colleges have produced 13 NFL Hall of Famers and earned five NFL MVPS and three Super Bowl MVPS, that’s a little hard to understand.
“It’s disappointing but I don’t know that it’s surprising,” said Bill Blackwell, director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame. “We’re a relatively small state.”
This relatively small state has produced four players who finished in the top three on a Heisman ballot: Ole Miss quarterbacks Jake Gibbs (1960), Archie Manning (1970) and Eli Manning (2003) and Alcorn State quarterback Steve Mcnair (1994). Archie Manning came the closest to winning, earning 138 firstplace votes but finishing third behind Stanford’s Jim Plunkett and Notre Dame’s Joe Theismann.
To be fair, Archie Manning threw for fewer yards and accounted for fewer total touchdowns than both Plunkett and Theismann. The same is true of his son Eli, who threw for 11 fewer touchdowns than Oklahoma’s Jason White.
It’s less of a one-for-one argument for Gibbs, who finished third behind Navy running back Joe Bellino and Minnesota offensive lineman Tom Brown. But the truly interesting argument is Mcnair, and what his Heisman case opens up as one of the great what-ifs in Mississippi college football history.
Mcnair threw for 4,863 yards and ran for 936 yards in 1994. He threw for 44 touchdowns and averaged 527.2 yards per game, a mark that is the best in NCAA history, FBS or FCS.
Colorado running back Rashaan Salaam won the award, running for 2,055 yards and 25 touchdowns. Penn State running back Ki-jana Carter, with 1,539 yards and 23 touchdowns, finished runner-up. Mcnair snagged 111 first-place votes, four fewer than Carter but 289 shy of Salaam.
At least Mcnair got as close as he did. For other legends from Mississippi’s historically black universities, recognition was even harder to gain.
“I think people hold the competition against them because it’s a smaller school,” Blackwell said. “They think they’re just putting up huge numbers facing inferior competition. In those guys’ case, that didn’t turn out to be the matter of fact.”
The case for HBCU stars
In 1973, Jackson State’s Walter Payton ran for seven more touchdowns than Penn State’s John Cappelletti in one fewer game, plus Payton kicked field goals. Cappelletti won the Heisman; Payton didn’t finish in the top 10. One year later, Payton ran for seven more touchdowns than Ohio State’s Archie Griffin in two fewer games. Griffin won the Heisman; Payton didn’t finish in the top 10.
“It’s not necessarily the best players who get the Heisman ever year,” Jackson State legend Eddie Payton, Walter’s brother, told the Clarion Ledger. “It’s the most publicized players. (Walter) was disappointed because he knew poundfor-pound he was a much better football player than Archie was.”
In 1984, Mississippi Valley State receiver Jerry Rice caught 27 touchdowns. Boston College quarterback Doug Flutie threw for 27 touchdowns. Flutie won the Heisman; Rice finished ninth with three first-place votes.
History has vindicated Rice and Payton. Mcnair as well, to an extent. And players like Southern Miss quarterbacks Brett Favre (no top-10 finishes) and Reggie Collier (ninth place, 1981) and Mississippi State quarterback Dak Prescott (eighth place, 2014) had great seasons but probably didn’t deserve Heisman recognition.
The harder players to talk about, as Blackwell points out, are examples like Millsaps linebacker Sean Brewer. Brewer’s 99 solo tackles and 15 sacks in 1992 made him comparably productive to Florida State’s Marvin Jones, who finished fourth in the Heisman voting that year. But how can someone fairly compare Division III success against someone thriving at Florida State?
All of this leads back to Corral. This week, Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin advocated for his quarterback’s Heisman bid, saying no one who puts up similar numbers has it harder than his quarterback. Reflecting on his own Heisman candidacy, Eli Manning said he likes what Corral has done this year but doesn’t think the Heisman needs to be his focus.
“All the Heisman stuff kind of takes care of itself if you’re playing well, you’re winning games, you’re doing your job,” Manning said.
Mcnair should’ve won the Heisman Trophy. Rice probably should’ve too. Payton had as good of a case as anyone two times and everyone from Gibbs to Manning to Collier to Prescott at least belonged in the discussion. Now it’s Corral’s turn to bring Mississippi a trophy it should already have a few copies of.
“I think it just enhances (Mississippi’s footprint),” Blackwell said. “The more notoriety that a player gets, the more people follow him. Whether it’s at a local level, a high school level, a college level, those that get written about and talked about, their image is enhanced. Whether that’s right, wrong or indifferent, that’s just the way things happen.”
nsuss@gannett.com