But that hurdle is not insurmountable. Ten of the past 11 winners played for teams in the South or Southwest. And ultimately, since everyone is from somewhere, regional bias in Heisman voting should cancel itself out — particularly in a year, like this one, when the top points-getters are from different regions.
In contrast, Kopkin saw regional bias have a more decisive influence in, say, 1993, when the top three points-getters all hailed from the South. The overall victor, Florida State quarterback Charlie Ward, actually lost his own region to runners-up from Alabama and Tennessee. He stacked his points in other regions, Kopkin speculates, partly thanks to Florida State’s membership in the predominantly Mid-Atlantic Atlantic Coast Conference and the Seminoles’ prodigious number of nationally televised games.
If there is a bellwether region, meanwhile, it is the Northeast, which is New England and New York. It contains just 34.6 million people and only six F.B.S. members (and merely two teams in the so-called Power 5 conferences). Since it rarely produces a finalist, it is theoretically freed from regional bias and therefore more likely to reflect the national dispensation.
“Because of the low representation, the Northeast region tends to mirror the overall Heisman voting results,” said Daniel P. Heard, a quantitative risk analyst who began tracking Heisman voting patterns while studying statistics at Duke, in an email.
Every year but one since 1998, Heard said, the eventual Heisman winner also won the Northeast. The exception was 2003, when wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald of Pitt — then of the Big East, whose members included several Northeast programs — received more points in the Northeast than the overall winner Jason White, Oklahoma’s quarterback.
If the Northeast is something of an accidental kingmaker, that may be appropriate for the region in which the Heisman originated and is still handed out.
“This is New York City’s chance to shine in college football,” said Dick “Hoops” Weiss, who previously wrote for the New York Daily News and is the Mid-Atlantic regional representative.
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