NEW YORK (AP) Alabama’s Bryce Young and Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud have been friends since middle school, competing in basketball and football while growing up in Southern California.
Young can already claim one victory against Stroud, winning the Heisman on Saturday night over his fellow finalist.
The two quarterbacks will return to college in 2022 and resume the competition from afar.
Young is the fifth sophomore to win the Heisman and sixth player in his second year of college. Stroud is a second-year player and first-year starter, like Young, but a redshirt freshman by eligibility.
In 2022, Young will try to become just the second player to win two Heismans. Ohio State running back Archie Griffin is the only two-time winner of college football’s top player award, taking it home in 1974 and ’75.
Back then the Heisman was dominated by seniors, so it was rare to have a returning winner in college football. That’s changed over the last two decades.
In 2007, Florida quarterback Tim Tebow became the first sophomore to win the award.
The next two winners (Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford and Alabama’s Mark Ingram) also were sophomores. Bradford was a sophomore by eligibility but in his third year at Oklahoma when he won the Heisman in 2008 after redshirting as a freshman.
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was the first redshirt freshman to win the Heisman, in 2012, and Jameis Winston of Florida State matched the feat the following year.
Lamar Jackson of Louisville also was a sophomore when he won the Heisman in 2016.
Among the sophomore and redshirt freshmen to win the Heisman, only Tebow played two more seasons in college after winning the award. Tebow finished third in the voting in 2008 and fifth in 2009.
All the others played just one more year of college football and none came particularly close to winning another Heisman. Manziel…
..
