The Heisman Trophy: Trolls, Curses, and the Wish That Comes True

A little less than 48 hours ago, Kyler Murray, a 21 year old quarterback from the University of Oklahoma sat in an audience at a New York City venue awaiting the outcome of the Heisman Trophy voting. Next to him were two other young men, Alabama QB, Tua Tagovailoa and Dwayne Haskins, the signal caller at Ohio State.

The early money had been on Tagovailoa to win the award. His hype had started last year during a brilliant second half performance in the national championship game. His lead, at least in the minds of the media, was solid for most of the year. So, as he and the Crimson Tide ripped through opponents at will the prize appeared his to lose.

Haskins, while personally having an excellent year, had the misfortune to be on a team which at times was magnificent and others looked deeply flawed. Ohio State crushed Michigan, but was, in turn, thrashed by a mediocre Purdue team, should have lost to Maryland, and was pushed to the end by a terrible Nebraska squad. It is widely believed in any other year he would have won. However, because of Murray and Tagovailoa, he was doomed to place third.

When it came to Murray, on one hand his Sooners were arguably the best offensive unit in the college game while on the other side of the ball they were perhaps the worst. We're not talking simply below average here. Practically the entire year it seemed like the Oklahoma defensive strategy was to just get in the fucking way sometimes and hope the ball carrier would trip and fall over someone. Well, that, or let the opponent score as quickly as possible so Murray and his mates could get back on the field enough times to outscore the other guys.

This dichotomy was so acute the team as a whole rivaled any known case of Dissociative Identity Disorder recorded in the annals of American psychiatry. It also forced Kyler Cole Murray to be perfect in every game OU played. The result was the Sooners gave up 40 or more points in five games, but won four of them. It is a statistic so baffling no one had even thought to track it before this year.

By Saturday the odds had finally swung in Murray's favor. This was thanks to a growing appreciation of what he had accomplished and a sub par performance by Tagovailoa against Georgia prior to an ankle injury which caused him to exit the game. That contest proved beyond a doubt Bama can beat just about anyone without him on the field. At the same time everyone with a brain who watches the sport knows that without Kyler Murray, Oklahoma would probably have ended up being a .500 team.

Unfortunately, besides Murray, Tagoviloa, and Haskins, there were others waiting for the results that evening. Some unidentified troll had gone digging through Kyler Murray's twitter account just because he, or she could and these days if you can't scandalize someone your life apparently isn't worth living.

Seemingly within minutes after receiving the Heisman six of Murray's tweets which contained the word, "queer," appeared in places like the New York Post, the Daily Mail and others. Headlines blared, the newly minted award winner had used, "homophobic slurs," while tweeting.

He did, although when he posted those tweets he was a 14 and 15 year old high school kid participating in back and forth banter between friends. For those of you who were never that age, I can testify 14 and 15 year old boys say a lot of stupid stuff they later regret. In my own case I can only thank God Almighty there wasn't social media in 1964 and 1965, because back then I was an utter asshole with absolutely no understanding of the world and others in it. By the time I was 21, like Kyler Murray is now, I had become a completely different person--which we can assume, due to his apology offered up Sunday on Twitter, he is also.

So yeah, I'm going to give him a pass on this one. Simply put, I'd rather not condemn a young man today for typing an objectionable word a few times when he wasn't even old enough to drive a car.

Besides if we're going to worry about something it should be OU's Heisman curse. You see Kyler Murray is the seventh Oklahoma player to win the Heisman Trophy. To date none of them have won a national championship the same year.

It is an awful bit of trivia. One that brings us to a quote by James M. Cain which author, John Wooley told me the other day while we discussed the season's end. "I write of the wish that comes true," Cain once said, "for some reason a terrifying thought."

Indeed. Especially when you realize next up for Murray and Co. is the undefeated King Kong of college football, Alabama and a Tua Tagovailoa who would love to prove the Heisman voters wrong.



12-10-18