Joel Klatt predicts Heisman discourse will turn into Big Ten vs. SEC

Much of college football already comes down to the debate between the Big Ten and the SEC. The Heisman Trophy will now be the latest topic to be affected by that over this next month or so, says Joel Klatt.

Klatt discussed some of the Heisman candidates during his show on Monday, namely with the emergence of Ohio State QB Julian Sayin. He thinks, naming Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza as well as Alabama’s Ty Simpson and Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed as candidates who could be in New York, that this could come down to some league bias or preference from voters, whether it be for the Southeastern Conference or for the Big Ten.

“Speaking of the Heisman, I would just say this, and I’ll start talking about the Heisman more as we go on in the month of November,” prefaced Klatt. “You know, obviously Simpson is going to be involved, Fernando Mendoza is going to be involved, I think Marcel Reed is going to be involved – and, rightfully so for all of those guys. And so it’s going to turn into this kind of, like, SEC-Big Ten type of conversation, to some extent, at some point. And, I think my thought would be, at some point, the SEC vote will break a specific way to Simpson or Reed, in particular if they play each other in the SEC Championship – and those votes are supposed to wait until after the SEC Championship, or at least they should. Some people vote before that, but I think we should see all of the games that we possibly can before the vote is done.

“You might get Mendoza against Sayin. If, like, let’s just say for sake of argument, Ohio State were to beat Indiana and let’s say, you know, Alabama were to beat Texas A&M, and it’s like Simpson and Julian Sayin? I think what you would have is a narrative, in particular from the southern contingent, that, hey, Julian Sayin has Smith and Tate and all these guys, and he might not even be the best player on his own team, whereas Simpson is kind of the catalyst, the MVP if you will, for Alabama. That would be – I guess, I don’t know. Not even a fear, but, like, I could see it playing out kind of in that direction, but we’ll see what happens.”

Klatt named the four quarterbacks who are the current favorites for The Heisman Trophy at BetMGM, with Sayin (+175) being the new favorite ahead of Mendoza (+225), Simpson (+350), and Reed (+750). They all also each topped the Heisman Poll after Week 10, with that vote conducted each week by the experts at On3.

However, as often happens in the sport, conversations about conferences could come into play. Beyond who’s the actual best player on a given team or the statistical year someone may be having, some might take something like strength of schedule, for example, into consideration to justify one player in one league over one player from another.

Still, that’s a discussion that’ll have to be played out over the next six weeks. That’s with several games left in the regular season, as well as a conference title games for multiple of the quarterbacks named above likely to play in, to justify being so deserving that it never even becomes a talking point come the ceremony.

“A lot of these guys are playing really great football,” added Klatt.

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