HOOVER, Ala. -- Moments make Heisman Trophy campaigns, and in the
case of a player who could shatter the award's last glass ceiling, it
couldn't be more true.
Fourth quarter. Outback Bowl. A breakdown
on Michigan's offensive line allowed Jadeveon Clowney a clear path to
running back Vincent Smith as the South Carolina end delivered a bone-crunching hit. Smith's helmet and the ball were knocked lose and Clowney reached down and recovered the fumble.
"The next day, it was on ESPN over and over and over," Clowney said. "I was like 'Well, I know it's a big hit now."
A few million views on YouTube, countless GIFs and a T-shirt
later, it became a play that jumpstarted the Gamecocks star's campaign
as he tries to become the first strictly defensive player in history to
win the Heisman.
"(Clowney) is the best player in the country,"
said Gamecocks receiver Bruce Ellington. "I watch him on the sideline
and it is amazing to me to see a guy that big that moves that fast. I've
never seen anybody like him, so, yeah, I'd say he's the best player in
the country."
But is it enough?
Seventeen
times a defender has cracked the top five in voting -- some will claim
Michigan's Charles Woodson was the fist defensive player, but he also
was involved in the return game and in handful of plays at receiver --
and seven have reached the top 10. Kurt Burris (1954), Pitt's Hugh Green
(1980), and most recently, Notre Dame's Manti Te'o (2012), came the
closest, finishing second.
While Te'o's now infamous narrative of
his dead girlfriend helped build steam amid the Fighting Irish's run to
the BCS Championship Game, he was an afterthought in the preseason.
That
attention won't be a problem for Clowney. Playing to a crowd of
reporters that went five rows deep when he took the side stage at the
Wynfrey Hotel, there's little doubt the junior, who last year was a
unanimous All-American and the Hendricks Award winner, has the kind of
preseason buzz that no player on that side of the ball has had since
Green.
In the summer of 1980, Green appeared on the cover of
'Sports Illustrated'
(http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/cover/featured/8708/index.htm)
in an imposing image in which the three-time consensus All-American end
posed with a live panther in the background. The school spent an
estimate $3,000-$5,000 (upwards of $28,000 in today's dollars) creating
posters of the image, sending them out to 4,000 potential voters.
Despite that push and 179 first-place votes, Green finished 267 points behind South Carolina's George Rogers.
But where Green and others failed, Clowney could be the right player at the right time to make history.
"I'd
say definitely he's the best football player in the country," said
South Carolina QB Connor Shaw. "He is so wide and fast that on a read
option, I'm glad he's on my team and I'm not having to face him."
We
are coming off a season in which we've seen the unprecedented, not just
with the winner as Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel broke through as the
first freshman recipient, but also with Te'o, whose 1,706 points in
December's voting were the most ever for a defensive player. And in a
showing of how open voters may be to Clowney finished sixth in that
race, drawing four first-place votes in a season in which he had 13
sacks and 23 1/2 tacked for loss.
But for all that last season's
ceremony seemed to rewrite, Manziel's out-of-nowhere victory isn't
likely to be the norm. A race where the preseason favorite (last year
with USC's Matt Barkley) and the midseason leader (West Virginia's Geno
Smith, then Kansas State's Collin Klein) fall so drastically just isn't
going to happen on a consistent basis.
There will always be
certain tentpoles of a Heisman campaign and name recognition, a valuable
fuel that's on Clowney's side, is still one of them. It also helps he's
one of the unquestioned stars in the nation's current king conference,
which has produced seven consecutive national championships and four
Heisman winners in the past six years, including three of the last four
in Alabama's Mark Ingram ('09), Auburn's Cam Newton ('10) and Manziel.
But
can the combination of Clowney's hype and the SEC's reputation help him
to clear the last hurdle of an award that has been defined as much by
its politics as it has its winners? Spurrier says there are no plans to
add to Clowney to the offensive set.
That may prove the biggest
test of college football in its current form. Voters were willing to put
aside their long-held stance on freshman by putting the trophy in
Manziel's hands, but crowning a defensive player is something else
entirely.
The SEC has no shortage of likely candidates. There's
Manziel, Georgia's Aaron Murray and Alabama's A.J. McCarron -- all
quarterbacks, one of the power positions in Heisman history along with
running back -- and those are just the ones we know of in July. But none
of them had Florida coach Will Muschamp saying what he said when asked
about Clowney.
"I'd like to see him come out early before our
game," Muschamp joked. "He's an outstanding player. He's a guy you
better account for every snap. He's an explosive guy. Got great football
instincts, initial quickness. He's got power. He's a guy that can play
fines on the edge and power."
The Hit, as its come to be known in
SEC circles, simply set the stage. It's a space that has rarely been
inhabited by a defender, but it's one that Clowney appears comfortable
living on for these next few months.
He smiled when asked if he has thought about winning the award. Can a defender break through? Has he thought about the Heisman?
"The
Heisman's not a big deal to me," he said. "Winning the SEC
championship's a big deal to me. Getting drafted high's a big deal."
