Heisman winner tough to tackle

Richard Rosenblatt

Friday, Dec. 7, 2001 | 11:20 a.m.

Three members of the Las Vegas Sun sports staff have Heisman Trophy votes. This is how they marked their ballots:

Steve Guiremand

1. David Carr, Fresno State

2. Rex Grossman, Florida

3. Brandon Doman, Brigham Young

Dean Juipe

1. David Carr, Fresno State

2. Kurt Kittner, Illinois

3. Ken Dorsey, Miami

Jeff Haney

1. Rex Grossman, Florida

2. Eric Crouch, Nebraska

3. Ken Dorsey, Miami

NEW YORK -- Pick a quarterback, any quarterback, then try to figure out why he should win the Heisman Trophy.

The way the season played out, even the four finalists seem reluctant to step up to the podium Saturday night and accept college football's top individual prize if their name is called.

"In a perfect world, the Heisman Trophy winner comes from behind and wins the last game with a great play," Florida's Rex Grossman said.

Grossman couldn't come up with one against Tennessee last week. But he's not alone. The other finalists -- Miami's Ken Dorsey, Nebraska's Eric Crouch and Oregon's Joey Harrington -- didn't finish in a blaze of Heisman glory, either.

"I haven't even done what it takes to actually win it," Dorsey said, despite leading No. 1 Miami to a perfect record and into a national title game in the Rose Bowl.

Florida and Nebraska lost their final games -- the Gators to Tennessee, 34-32, on Grossman's incomplete 2-point conversion pass, and the Huskers to Colorado, 62-36. Miami barely beat Virginia Tech 26-24 after the Hokies missed a 2-point conversion, and Oregon held off Oregon State 17-14 on a rain-soaked field.

"You'd like to see them give it to someone good enough to win that (last) game," Grossman said, "but obviously we weren't good enough."

Without a solid favorite, the Heisman race has turned into one of the most unpredictable in the 67-year history of the award.

The closest finish was Bo Jackson's 45-point win over Chuck Long in 1985, but that was a two-player race. The last three-player race was 1995, when Ohio State's Eddie George won over Nebraska's Tommie Frazier and Florida's Danny Wuerffel.

The Heisman will be presented at a Manhattan hotel and away from the Downtown Athletic Club for the first time. The DAC was damaged in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Each quarterback has a winning pitch, with a catch:

Rex Grossman

"He is probably the best pure passer of the quarterbacks I have coached," said Steve Spurrier, who also coached '96 Heisman winner Wuerffel. "He loves to compete and play the game."

Eric Crouch

Ken Dorsey

Joey Harrington

"People think different things about the award, so it's a very tough call to make," he said.