RB Respect Month Vol. 2, Day Nine: Iowa State's Troy Davis and the 1996 Heisman race
How much should a team's overall record matter in the vote?
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Welcome to day nine of Running Back Respect Month™! Yesterday, Shonn Greene bulldozed Wisconsin in 2008. Here's where we're at today, and how the rest of the month looks:
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Today: Troy Davis vs. Missouri (1996)
RB Respect Month Vol. 2, Day Nine: Iowa State's Troy Davis and the 1996 Heisman race
I'm not even going to intro you into today's piece. I just want you to watch Iowa State's Troy Davis run for 378 yards and four touchdowns against Missouri in 1996:
It was the third-most rushing yards in a single game at the time, and still ranks seventh 29 years later. Davis broke a bunch of tackles, juked a lot of dudes, and ran faster than everyone else on the field. Typical RB Respect Month stuff. The larger discussion I want to have today is about the 1996 Heisman race.
By the time 1996 ended, the 2,000-yard rushing barrier had only been broken in a season seven times. Two of the entries in that exclusive club belonged to Davis:
As you can see from that graphic –which comes from a game we'll get to later this week– in 1995 Davis became the first player to ever run for 2,000 and not win the Heisman. He pulled off the feat again in 1996, along with Texas Tech's Byron Hanspard. That begs the question: How exactly does the first sophomore to ever run for 2,000 yards, who's also the first player overall to do it twice, not win college football's most prestigious award during the golden age of the running back position? The easy explanation is that Iowa State stunk.
