Book excerpt: Charles Woodsons Heisman win epitomized Michigans 1997 title run

Publish date: 2024-05-14

Tennessee’s Peyton Manning waited until March 1997 to forgo the NFL draft and return to Knoxville for his senior season.

In an instant, Manning went from being a lock to be the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick to being the prohibitive favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. Manning made no mention of the Heisman that day. He didn’t need to. In a football-mad state without a previous winner — three runners-up and plenty of hard feelings — there was an expectation.

Michigan’s Charles Woodson, meanwhile, had slightly more modest goals.

As Woodson sat at the College Football Awards Show at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, in December 1996, a finalist for the Thorpe Award for the nation’s top defensive back, he seethed when he didn’t win.

There was an inconsistent voting process resulting in what he felt was a lesser player winning the award.

“I’m gonna go out and win every trophy imaginable for a defensive player to win,” he told himself.

No primarily defensive player had won the Heisman Trophy, and it had been 25 years since a defensive back was selected the nation’s best defensive player with any major award.

Michigan did little to help Woodson, by design. Although Lloyd Carr never forbade sports information director Bruce Madej from running a campaign for Woodson, there was an understanding that Michigan sold itself.

Manning opened the door for other candidates in late September when No. 4 Tennessee lost to No. 3 Florida, 33-20.

Woodson spent the season’s first half as a fringe candidate as a part-time two-way player, an All-America cornerback who contributed occasionally on offense.

Then his leaping, one-handed interception against Michigan State in late October changed everything.

The spectacular play was shown repeatedly on national highlight shows and local sportscasts, introducing Woodson to a new audience of fans — and to more Heisman voters.

Each week he seemed to add a highlight to his resume.

The buzz belonged to Woodson.

Then the Buckeyes rolled into Ann Arbor on November 22 for a showdown between top-ranked Michigan and No. 4 Ohio State and Woodson was clearly the best player on the field.

When Woodson reached the end zone on the punt return, he hoped to follow in Desmond Howard’s 1991 footsteps by striking the Heisman pose. But his teammates were so excited, they mobbed him in a giant dogpile, preventing Woodson from his own marketing opportunity.

Although he was second in the country with seven interceptions, Woodson still didn’t think he had a chance to win at the Heisman ceremony in New York. Many pundits thought another highlight or two could have helped.

Despite writing on his preseason goal card for Carr that “personal goals mean nothing,” Charles Woodson’s name was about to be chiseled in history.

The Heisman Trophy weekend began with a finalists dinner on December 12. Everyone was on his best behavior.

That Friday night, however, the Downtown Athletic Club, presenter of the college football’s biggest award since 1935, provided the players with a limousine to tour New York. Woodson and Marshall receiver Randy Moss were ready to tear up the Big Apple.

One problem: Madej insisted on being along for the ride.

It took hours before Madej finally left them. With neither player expecting to win the award, they enjoyed the night after ditching the middle-aged sports information director.

Fortunately for Madej, when he went to wake up Woodson on Saturday morning for a day of press events, Woodson was right there in his hotel room, as instructed. Given that, the hours in between were not questioned.

When Woodson arrived at the ceremony, his group was small: Madej, his family, and teammate Marcus Ray.

Manning rolled in for an expected coronation with an entourage of his famous family, coaches, friends, etc.

The other finalists were Moss, and Ryan Leaf, a quarterback from Washington State, Michigan’s Rose Bowl opponent.

The telecast revealing the winner had expanded significantly since Michigan wide receiver/kick returner Desmond Howard won the Heisman in 1991, when it amounted to a 15-minute infomercial and quick announcement. Now it was a TV event, complete with sit-down interviews, player highlights, and analysis.

Michigan was not prepared. Carr remained in Ann Arbor, hosting recruits as the basketball team played top-ranked Duke that afternoon at Crisler Arena. That’s the blueprint Gary Moeller used when Howard was a finalist.

But in an ESPN production meeting, hosts Chris Fowler and Lee Corso were stunned that Carr wouldn’t be there to be interviewed on the set. Madej called Carr, and they considered whether Carr should hop on a flight.

Then Madej changed course. If ESPN wanted an interview with someone to speak about Woodson’s character, they had an expert on site: his mother, Georgia.

“She was better than any of the coaches,” Madej said years later.

She revealed far more about Woodson’s personal growth, from grabbing flags in the local youth league to the family discussion picnics on the living room floor.

The 45-minute ceremony highlighted each of the four candidates with individual features. ESPN even spotlighted the siblings and close friends sitting behind the podium, including Woodson’s brother, Terry, seated between Ray and a high school quarterback named Eli Manning.

At 39 minutes into the telecast, Downtown Athletic Club president Peter Junge opened the envelope, noting it was the “most outstanding collegiate football player in the United States, 1997.”

“And the winner … from Michigan, Charles Woodson.”

Woodson put his head down and grinned. Manning offered a muted clap. Then Moss elbowed Woodson, reminding him to step up.

Woodson shook Manning’s hand, Leaf’s hand, hugged Moss, and then took a knee next to the podium, his left hand covering his eyes, as he gathered himself.

Before he spoke, he walked to hug his mother and his father in the front row.

“I was sitting there in that chair and thinking to myself, ‘Do I really have a shot?’” Woodson said at the podium.

He thanked his mother, his father, his brother, and Ray. He shouted out to Ann Arbor and his hometown of Fremont, Ohio, as the camera isolated on Manning, clearly disappointed.

Woodson defeated Manning by more than 250 points (1,815 to 1,543), capturing five of the six regions (Manning won the South by 122 points). Woodson had a big edge in first-place votes, 433 to 281.

Three years earlier, Woodson sat at a recruiting dinner and told the Michigan coaches that, despite his prolific rushing statistics, he wanted to play cornerback, assuming it dashed his Heisman chances. But that was for a conventional player. Woodson was a unicorn.

Even almost a quarter-century later, though, the moment still gnawed at Manning.

“I probably don’t have as fond a memory of it as Charles does,” Manning told The Athletic in 2021. “I didn’t have a great feeling about it going in. I remember having those conversations with my dad, like, ‘I don’t think I am going to win.’ That was just my gut feeling. I knew what a great player Charles was and what a great season he had just had. People were saying that defensive players don’t win, but Charles was not just a defensive player.”

True to his goal, Woodson won almost every trophy imaginable for a defensive player: the Chuck Bednarik Award and Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the nation’s top defensive player, and the Thorpe Award as the top defensive back. He also beat Manning for the Walter Camp Award, which recognized the sport’s most outstanding player. The only top prize that eluded him was the Maxwell Award for the best player in college football, which Manning won by 55 votes out of 2,500 cast.

“Charles speaks things into existence,” Ray said at the time.

Manning’s regular-season stats: 36 touchdown passes, .602 completion percentage, 3,819 passing yards, 11 interceptions.
Woodson’s stats that ESPN showed on Heisman night: seven interceptions, 15 offensive touches, 18.3 yards a touch, three offensive touchdowns, nine first downs, plus the perfect punt return against Ohio State.

Just like his team, Woodson was much more impressive when put together.

(Top photo by Chuck Solomon / Getty Images)

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Book excerpt: Charles Woodsons Heisman win epitomized Michigans 1997 title run