Didn't check for accuracy but Bleacher Report recently had an article that identified two such quarterbacks: James Harris, 1950's Oklahoma and Chuck Ealey, 1970's Toledo.
I was going to say that since Oklahoma won 48 straight games under Bud Wilkinson in the early fifties, perhaps the Oklahoma quarterback went undefeated. That would be a feat, wouldn't it, for McElroy to go through his whole college career without a loss.
I had forgotten the name Jim Harris. The backs on that Oklahoma team were Clendon Thomas, rhb, Bill Krisher, fb, and Tommy McDonald, lhb. They ran a double-option system, the same thing that Darrell Royal had run when he was Wilkinson's QB at Oklahoma, most probably. Royal ultimately took that double option system with him from Miss State to Washington, to Texas -- and then his assistant at Texas, Emory Bellard, developed the triple option (Wishbone) out of the double option. In those option-type systems, the QB was a offense-manager, for the most part, not a dropback style QB. Therefore he did not figure in when it came time to vote for the Heisman. Harris was never a big Heisman candidate at all, I don't think.
You know, I have seen where McElroy went through some doubts, etc., about his leadership ability last year. Whan I read that, I was surprised. Just to look at him I would have thought he just took it all in stride. There is really something special about his QB-ing last year. When he had to step up against Auburn and Florida, he did it -- reached down, as they say, and pulled up something to win the Auburn game. Admirable.
It just seems to me like Saban, once the season is in full swing, will revert to the thing that has won for him at both LSU and Alabama, and that has usually been a running game with two backs alternating and the quarterback being mostly a game manager who occasionally throws to loosen ujp the defense. As long as the defense knows there is a Julio out there, especially if he is healthy, they are not going to stack the line. As soon as they come up to stop Ingram or Richardson, McElroy will be throwing it. But that probably will be relatively seldom. No Heisman, but as the guy says, I'll take another national championship any day over another Heisman. If you win that NC, then somebody on this team is going to be looked at for the Heisman. Probably one or both of the running backs.
If it had been up to me, I might have given the Heisman to Julio last year, for all that blocking he did for Ingram and Richardson. With Carpenter, Johnson, Julio, and Smelley, etc., out there on the left, Ingram and Richardson went through and around opposing defenses like the 8 o'clock train.
I tell you somebody McElroy sort of reminds me of. I think it was 1957 when Pete Dawkins, the Army running back, won the Heisman. Dawkins, the lhb, was a Rhodes Scholar -- went to study at Oxford after college football, became a general in Viet Nam. The other big Army running back in that same backfield, Bob Anderson, had gotten all the ink and was expected to win the Heisman in '57. Out of nowhere, Dawkins won it. Another player on those Red Blaik Army teams was "The Lonesome End," Bill Carpenter. These were all disciplined players, like McElroy. Carpenter never came to the huddle, thus the title, "Lonesome End."
