There have been seven Heisman Trophies won by Ohio State University (OSU) football players. A total of six players have won those seven trophies, as Archie Griffin remains the only college football player to win more than one Heisman Trophy. Griffin won both awards from him in 1974 and 1975 following his junior and senior seasons.
The most recent Heisman winner to come out of Ohio State was quarterback Troy Smith. Smith won in December 2006, a couple of weeks before losing 41-14 in the national championship game to University of Florida’s Tim Tebow, who a year later would become the first sophomore to win the award.
The Ohio State Buckeyes Heisman Trophy winners are:
- The Horvaths (1944): quarterback/running back
- Vic Janowicz (1950): running back/kicker
- Howard Cassady (1955): runner
- Archie Griffin (1974 and 1975): running back
- Eddie George (1995): running back
- Troy Smith (2006): quarterback
Ohio State University is tied for the most Heisman trophies along with the University of Notre Dame and the University of Southern California (USC). After those three schools that have seven trophies each, the next closest is the University of Oklahoma with five and then there are four schools tied with three each. Interestingly, Army, which won the coveted award in 1945, 1946 and 1958, is tied with more modern prominent programs like the University of Florida, the University of Michigan and the University of Nebraska, all of which have three.
In some respects, the University of Notre Dame is like the top group Army program that is tied for seven. Excluding Tim Brown’s win in 1987, Notre Dame has only one winner (John Huarte in 1964) in roughly the last 55 years. By contrast, USC has produced nearly 43% of its winners since the turn of the millennium. Ohio State, by comparison, has had a much more even stream of winners over the decades.
Although often criticized for being too political and including only a small set of football positions, the Heisman Trophy is widely understood to be the most coveted individual award in college football. The first award was presented to Jay Berwanger, a running back from the University of Chicago, in 1935. The award itself is named for John Heisman, who was a highly influential figure in the early development of the college game before passing away on May 3. October. 1936, three weeks before his 67th birthday.
Winning the coveted award associated with being the best college soccer player in the nation is no guarantee of future success at the next level. There have been 75 Heisman Trophy winners, and to date only eight of them have been inducted into the football hall of fame, the most recent being Barry Sanders, who won the award in 1988.
