NEW YORK — This year’s Heisman Trophy ceremony will be an ode to the new era of college athletics.
Football is one of the sports most noticeably transformed by the transfer portal, the NCAA’s relaxed rules on eligibility for players who change programs, and name, image and likeness deals that have made being a student-athlete a more profitable venture for some.
Three of the four Heisman finalists are quarterbacks who blossomed into stars at their second schools and were having so much fun in college that they decided to stick around an extra year — or two.
“It’s different for everybody. It depends on how they want their life to go,” LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels said Friday. “We decided to transfer, and to start fresh, and to stay an extra year because we felt like we had something more to prove.”
Whether it is Daniels, Oregon’s Bo Nix or Washington’s Michael Penix Jr., the Heisman Trophy winner is likely to be a transfer quarterback for the fifth time in seven years.