College football's Heisman Trophy should once again require 'integrity' by players

The Heisman Memorial Trophy is awarded annually in New York City by the Heisman Trust. The 2024 winner will be announced Dec. 14 on national television.

Interestingly, the first Heisman was awarded in 1935 to Jay Berwanger, a senior running back at the University of Chicago. Berwanger passed on a pro football career due to a salary dispute with the Bears’ George Halas. He wanted a two-year $25,000 deal. Halas did not.

The 2022 Heisman winner, from the University of Southern California, is current Bears quarterback Caleb Williams, who was drafted No. 1 overall in 2024. His four-year deal is for a fully guaranteed $39.49 million, including an upfront signing bonus of $25.5 million. That’s about 1,600 times what Berwanger left on the table.

Over the last two decades, the Heisman process has been sullied by some embarrassing player integrity issues. After various poor character allegations surfaced about star college players such as Jameis Winston, Cam Newton and Reggie Bush, what did the Heisman Trust do? In 2014, it dropped “integrity” from its award criteria.

Giving up on integrity feels so wrong.

The Heisman Trophy stood out partly because its criteria for decades included "the pursuit of excellence with integrity." When the omission of "integrity" was pointed out by Sports Illustrated, the Heisman Trust said it was a web redesign oversight and “integrity” would be reinstated.

It went into the mission statement’s first sentence about preserving the integrity of the trophy. Aside from begging whether trophy hardware can even have integrity, it appears the integrity standard would no longer directly apply to players themselves.

Big problems arose after USC’s standout runner Reggie Bush won the Heisman in 2005. After he left school, the National Collegiate Athletic Association sanctioned USC, alleging Bush and his family had received improper financial benefits while he was playing there.

The NCAA vacated 14 USC wins and erased many of Bush’s records. His Heisman was forfeited in 2010, apparently due to NCAA and public pressures since the Heisman is not directly controlled by the NCAA.

Bush reacted with consternation, anger and a lawsuit against the NCAA this year. The Trust reinstated his trophy in 2024, three years after name, image and likeness rules were established to allow all college athletes to earn significant endorsement income, even beyond what Bush was accused of receiving while a student.

Evaluating integrity can be a murky exercise, but does that justify removal? Should the Heisman be awarded only for performance? That is easier to assess but not as meaningful.

A Heisman for integrity, but not for a football player

To its credit, the Heisman Trust now presents a Heisman Humanitarian Award, and the 2024 winner has already been announced: Misty Copeland, a top ballet dancer who promotes diversity, equity and inclusion for children through dance.

But why can’t the Heisman Trust also consider the character, honor and integrity of a young student-athlete football player? To do otherwise seems unbefitting, at best.

Touchdowns, yards and wins are tangible. Integrity is more abstruse.

Bush was accused of benefiting from financial assistance prohibited by archaic NCAA amateurism rules. After losing in court, the NCAA now allows players to earn money from their own name and image.

Bush could have and should have earned a great deal from his college football stardom in the first place, so reinstating his trophy seems appropriate. But is the long-term answer to remove the integrity element altogether? That sounds like a cop-out.

There was no compelling reason to delete integrity from the Heisman, other than to avoid future embarrassments. But integrity is surely a worthy consideration at the time the award is given. Should the Trust award its trophy to the best player if he is also a known abuser of women? That would not be a good look.

Sometimes problems surface much later, as in the infamous case of the late O.J. Simpson, the 1968 Heisman winner. The Heisman Trust need not monitor the integrity of winners in perpetuity, but integrity as a factor in the first place is still a noble goal. Without it, the Heisman is reduced to just another glorified statistics award.

Integrity could surely use a boost these days, and the Heisman Trust should give it one.

Eldon Ham is a member of the faculty at IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law, teaching sports, law and justice. He is the author of five books on the role of sports history in America.

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