HEISMANTOWN, USA – That's what we have become, and it sure sounds better than Enron By The Sea, or (insert laugh track here) America's Finest City.
When USC's Reggie Bush cradled the Heisman Trophy last night in New York, he became the fourth San Diegan since 1981 to win college football's most prestigious award. No other city has produced four.
So the Helix High alum joins Lincoln and USC's Marcus Allen, La Jolla Country Day and Colorado's Rashaan Salaam and Patrick Henry and Texas' Ricky Williams as Heisman winners. Quadraphonic Heismans. All running backs, all different. How about that for a belt of civic pride when we need all the shots of it we can get.
And a whole lot of people are starting to wonder just what it is about San Diego that suddenly has produced four Heisman winners in 25 years.
JULIE JACOBSON / Associated Press
Reggie Bush tears up as he thanks his family during his Heisman acceptance speech.
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"It's funny," says John Shacklett, now retired after a long and successful career as football coach at Morse. "I got a call from a New York Times reporter a few weeks ago asking: 'What's with San Diego and the four Heismans? Is it the water?' I said: 'We have a lot of great athletes come out of here.' "
Santa Fe Christian coach Brian Sipe, who quarterbacked at Grossmont High, San Diego State and became NFL MVP with Cleveland, won't put it on the H2O. "It can't be our water," he says. "It comes from Arizona."
Fact is, we didn't just start producing outstanding football players. There were a whole bunch before Allen ran wild and scored five touchdowns in the 1977 CIF championship game against Kearny. What Allen did was put San Diego football on the national map.
Before Allen (a quarterback and safety at Lincoln) went on to win the Heisman at USC and eventually a Hall of Fame NFL career, many San Diego County athletes were under the radar screen. The cracks were there to fall through.
Back in the mid-1970s, when I was covering high schools, a handful of athletes from this area would receive Division I-A scholarships. We had some very attractive people. Allen was recruited by Michigan, and Oklahoma wanted him to be its wishbone quarterback (now that would have been something to see). El Cajon Valley's Mark Malone and Orange Glen's Sean Salisbury, for example, were coveted quarterbacks.
Still, there weren't many. But after Allen became the flag bearer for San Diego football, misinformed college coaches determined there must be some good players south of Orange County. San Diego since has become a recruiting hotbed.
"I was at Escondido in 1969, coaching under Chick Embrey," says Torrey Pines coach Ed Burke, who has had a distinguished career. "That was the situation then. When I returned to San Diego in 1980, I thought the area still was under-recruited. I remember talking to Dave Lay, who was recruiting this area for Colorado State at the time, and he said a lot of schools didn't see San Diego as a fertile recruiting ground."
Lay changed all that, bringing many San Diego kids into Colorado State's system, and the program blossomed because of it.
"There was always talent here," Burke says. "But recruiters would fly into Los Angeles and didn't come south of Orange County. It's changed. I'm so happy for Reggie. He's a classy individual, the type of person who should win the Heisman."
In my mind, San Diego should have more of them. Bush should have won it a year ago, when he bailed USC out of nearly half its games with some form of derring-do. No chance the Trojans win 34 straight games without Bush. It might have been possible without Matt Leinart, in that Troy has prep All-America quarterbacks backed up into Exposition Park.
Marshall Faulk wasn't born here, but he should have won two Heismans while at San Diego State. Lincoln's Darrin Wagner, who was a comet at State prior to Faulk before everything fell apart for him, had Heisman bronze in his blood, believe me. Brilliant.
And we can go back a ways. San Diego High's Cotton Warburton was a great player at USC. He led 'SC to back-to-back national titles and was a consensus All-American in 1933. But there was no Heisman Trophy then. By the time the Downtown Athletic Club decided to name the award after the sportsman who coached Georgia Tech to a 220-0 win over Cumberland, it was 1935, and Chicago's Jay Berwanger won the first one. But Warburton did gather an Academy Award for editing "Mary Poppins," so that's something.
There's little doubt that, if there had been a Heisman in the early 1920s, San Diego High's Brick Muller and Pesky Sprott would have been involved, having starred on Cal's Wonder Teams. When Sports Illustrated picked the best players in the first 100 years of college football, Muller was a second-team end. He also won a silver medal in the high jump in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics.
San Diego High's Russ Saunders, the model for USC's Tommy Trojan statue, was MVP of the 1930 Rose Bowl. Bert Ritchey, Amby Schindler, Nelson Manuel, Bill McColl – all were terrific players before 1950, when San Diego was little more than a Navy town, tucked away out of sight and mind.
During the 1950s there were the likes of C.R. Roberts, Charlie and Art Powell (a receiver on the All-Time AFL team), David Grayson (a cornerback on the All-Time AFL team), Deron Johnson, H.D. Murphy, Cleveland Jones, Pete Gumina, Willie West, Luther Hayes and the brilliant Ezell Singleton, still the best prep quarterback to have played here. No Heismans.
San Diego has produced football players. Reggie Bush isn't the first and, the way things are going, he won't be the last. He won this Heisman because he is the greatest difference-maker in college football.
And let's not forget that, over the past 25 years, this area has produced Helix and Utah quarterback Alex Smith, Bush's running mate and the first pick in the 2005 NFL draft. And Lincoln's Terrell Davis, NFL and Super Bowl MVP with the Broncos, giving Lincoln two Super Bowl and NFL MVPs (Allen being the other).
"Reggie's a very special person," says Jim Arnaiz, for many years a successful coach at Helix. "Not just as a player, but a person, very down to earth, a young man who enjoyed school and took it seriously.
"I was still head coach when Reggie was a freshman, and you could see he was special. Now, if you had asked me if Alex as a ninth-grader would become a special player, no way. He was 5 feet 5."
So, now we wonder: Who's next? Who will be the next San Diegan to win the Heisman?
"Yeah, it is surprising," Chargers tailback LaDainian Tomlinson, an admirer of Bush, says about the four San Diego Heismans. "I don't know what it is about San Diego that keeps producing great running backs, but if I have a son, it's going to be tough to get him away from here."
Little LT wins the Heisman? Right pedigree, right place.
Nick Canepa: (619) 293-1397; nick.canepa@uniontrib.com
