VICE Sports Heisman Watch: The Case for Leonard Fournette

There is no more capricious award in sports than the Heisman Trophy, which explains why, 30 years ago, Bo Jackson faced a prodigious public-relations issue. There was little doubt that Jackson was the best running back in the country, if not the best running back of his generation; there was little doubt that, in a world where the Heisman was bestowed merely to the most exciting player in college football, Jackson deserved the damned thing. That is, until Rick Reilly stepped in.

Back then, Reilly was the college football writer for Sports Illustrated; Jackson, nursing various injuries, had just run for 48 yards on 16 carries against Florida after leaving the game in the second quarter. It was Reilly who labeled Jackson as soft, and it was Reilly who nominated a Division III running back named Joe Dudek for the Heisman instead. This was a classic magazine stunt, and no one can blame Reilly for attempting to spur a conversation, but here is the truth: I imagine there are few people who regret voting for Bo Jackson to win the Heisman Trophy that year, because Bo Jackson became an American icon.

Which leads us straight into Leonard Fournette.

The rationale of this column is to explore the machinations of Heisman voting in the final weeks before the vote actually occurs. This has been one of the most fascinating years of Heisman groupthink in my lifetime, if only because it seemed like the choice was patently obvious for the first half of the season, and now appears to be completely wide open. There are no real criteria for Heisman voters; it is a purposely nebulous award because the powers that be wish to encourage arguments like this one. But there are Heisman archetypes, and there are Heisman narratives. This column will examine those archetypes as the vote draws nearer, and it has to begin with the man who may in fact be the closest thing we've seen to Bo Jackson since Bo Jackson himself. It has to begin with Leonard Fournette.

The argument for Fournette is not a complex one. The argument for Fournette is not only that he leads the nation in rushing yards per game but that he also leads the nation in rushing yards, albeit narrowly, over Alabama's Derrick Henry. The argument for Fournette is contained in this run against Auburn, in which he appeared to have so intimidated the Auburn defense that they no longer wished to risk their future ability to utilize their extremities by bothering to tackle him. Fournette is explosive and surprising, and on top of that he appears to be a humble and decent fellow, which is one of those X factors that probably shouldn't mean much of anything in modern college football but still does.

These are the arguments for Leonard Fournette, and the arguments are considerable. The argument against Fournette is a simple one, a single powerful note in an otherwise synchronous composition: against Alabama, possessor of the best defense in college football, Fournette ran for 31 yards on 19 carries.

This is a solid rebuttal. The case can be made that timing is everything, and that Alabama's Derrick Henry, who ran for 210 yards on 38 carries in the same game and appears to be peaking late in the season, deserves to be the frontrunner, thanks to this one game. I'm not entirely convinced, because while I think Derrick Henry is an extremely talented running back, I still believe that Leonard Fournette is a potentially transcendent running back, and in this case, I am tempted to believe that Henry is getting the benefit of the doubt merely because he plays on the better team. I am tempted to believe that if the jerseys were switched, Henry might have struggled against Alabama's impenetrable front seven.

The argument for Leonard Fournette is one based on feel. It is the argument that if we don't vote for Fournette, we might someday look back and regret it, in a Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction kind of way. I realize that Fournette is locked in to at least one more season at LSU, which means he could easily win the Heisman next year, but I don't think that should preclude anything about this season. Much of this is dependent on how Fournette completes the last couple of games of the regular season, and on how Henry performs against Auburn, but I think, if you're weighing these two running backs against each other, there is an element of pure aura that cannot be completely ignored.

Let's flash back to 1985 for a minute, because while Bo Jackson did wind up winning the Heisman that year, he won it narrowly. He won it by a total of 45 voting points, over a quarterback from the University of Iowa named Chuck Long. You could make the case that in the course of that season, in which Iowa went 10-2, Chuck Long was a worthy contender. You could make the case that the Heisman should not be an award that rewards potential future performance, and that Long was perhaps more consistent than Bo. There are certain choices that must be made merely because they make emotional and historical sense, because they fit into the Zeitgeist, and Bo Jackson was one of those choices. I wonder if Leonard Fournette might be one of those choices, too.