Flak Magazine: Kick Out the Sports! 12.29.03

Whenever a Heisman Trophy winner flops in pro football — which is often — someone invariably brings up the idea of a Heisman curse. As hokey as the idea of a curse sounds, some of the winners seem to believe it. Quarterback Jason White of Oklahoma, this year's honoree, is petitioning the NCAA for a sixth year of eligibility in college football — one more than allowed — rather than taking his chances with the NFL draft.

Of course, being the rational creatures we are (or should be), we should know there's nothing inherent in the gold-colored trophy that gives its winners the anti-Midas touch. It's merely an indication that jumping levels in sports is extremely difficult. As they say about the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

For a more extreme example of this, let us turn to another award: Mr. Football. Mr. Football, as the name would imply, is an award given to the high-schooler deemed the best football player in his state. Not all states have this award, but many have adopted it over the past 15 years.

The thing to remember about Mr. Football is that, like the Heisman, it only measures performance that year — not how well a player might perform at the next level. As the Birmingham News found, as of 2002 an Alabama Mr. Football was as likely to be the victim of a homicide as play in the NFL. (Alabama has one of each.)

For every Rex Grossman, Indiana's 1998 Mr. Football, who is now starting at quarterback for the Chicago Bears, there is an Israel Thompson. Indiana's 1996 Mr. Football could be the ultimate flameout in the Not the Murdered Guy division. The 6-foot-1, 215-pound Thompson rushed for 2,568 yards at Martinsville High, spent half a semester at Ball State, never played a down and dropped out. Now he's playing semi-pro football in Indianapolis, and in October 2003 he told the Indianapolis Star his big problem was, he never wanted to go to college.

In Thompson's case — the first clue that Mr. Football is no guarantee of a bright future — he went to Ball State, a minor Division I school. That's not uncommon among Mr. Footballs. The stats that mean something when you jump levels are 40-yard dash times, bench-press poundage and vertical leaps, not rushing and passing yards. And if you don't have those stats, you end up at Ball State.

Even for those with the talent to go to a top-tier Division I school — if I may be Captain Obvious for a moment — the problem is that the scrubs who made for easy pickings at the lower level have been weeded out. And if a player doesn't have the talent and desire to face that challenge — and stay in one piece doing it, while handling whatever level of academics are expected as well as living alone and no longer being some small town's Mr. All-American Boy — well, then he's toast.

For example, Willie Green was a high school All-American and Florida's Mr. Football in 1999, but the only honor he's won at the University of Florida is the Most Courageous Award. That sounds nice, but the reason he won it is that he's tried to keep playing despite surgery on both knees and a broken foot.

Another Florida Mr. Football (and Mr. Basketball), Adrian McPherson, appeared to have the talent to succeed at the next level, but gambling was his downfall. In July, a judge sentenced McPherson to 30 months of probation after he pleaded no contest to gambling and theft charges; a jury was hung on whether he actually bet on Florida State games. After briefly enrolling at Division I-AA Murray State, McPherson recently was denied entry to I-AA Tennessee State.

This is all presented merely to point out that, no matter what the award, it carries no guarantees. Sure, running back Robert Smith won Ohio's Mr. Football twice, and went on to a stellar career at Ohio State and the Minnesota Vikings. But Ohio's first Mr. Football, Buster Howe, dropped out of Ohio State not long after his arrival there. The good fortune for many Mr. Footballs is that they're great athletes, and perhaps can move into other pursuits. For example, Kentucky has had three Mr. Footballs play in the NFL, but two play pro baseball.

Back to the Birmingham News survey: The newspaper found that three Alabama Messrs. Football never played college football, and seven struggled with injuries or lack of playing time. So you never know what's going to happen. Chris Nickson, Alabama's 2003 Mr. Football, you are hereby advised to start working on obtaining your insurance license.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.