The hype is real: ‘Haynes King for Heisman’ gaining steam

The trophy is named for John Heisman, a legendary coach who led Georgia Tech to 102 wins over 16 seasons in the early 1900s.

Yet Tech has never had a player claim the Heisman Trophy in 90 years of the award.

Maybe this will be the year.

“Like I said before, you know, as long as we keep winning and executing and getting the job done, that’ll take care of itself,” Tech’s Haynes King said Saturday after the Yellow Jackets beat Syracuse 41-16.

King is Tech’s latest serious hope to win the Heisman Trophy. He’s a senior quarterback leading an undefeated No. 8 Tech team into a road game at North Carolina State at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. He’s the face of coach Brent Key’s team, the embodiment of the type of football player Key wants up and down his roster.

And now, a quarterback who was maybe fairly recognizable by college football fans throughout the Southeast, and in his native Texas, is becoming a common name on a national scope. And because of his impressive individual statistics are coupled with Tech’s rapid rise in the national rankings, King is a legitimate Heisman Trophy candidate as the calendar turns to November.

“Look at his stats. Look at his stats compared to other people, other players. Watch Haynes King with the ball in his hand with the game on the line,” Key said Tuesday. “He represents all that is great in college football. He is the best representative of any one individual for this entire sport that we play and we all love.”

In 1999, Key was playing offensive guard for Tech and blocking for quarterback Joe Hamilton, one of two Jackets to finish second in Heisman voting (quarterback Billy Lothridge finished second in 1963 after finishing eighth in 1962).

A South Carolina native, Hamilton had a monster season for the Jackets in ’99, completing 29 touchdown passes, throwing for more than 3,000 yards and running for 734 yards and six scores.

Tech threw all the support it could toward promoting Hamilton for Heisman. There were fake $10 bills with Hamilton’s face on it, a promotional highlight video with the familiar voice of Wes Durham providing the narration, and a mouse pad, which turned out to be a big hit, that was mailed out to voters.

Hamilton said he didn’t think any of that stuff, at the time, was really affecting his play on the field.

“I can remember we were playing North Carolina at home. We were running an option and I was going down and shoulda ate the ball and I tried to do a pitch (and fumbled), I was trying to do too much,” Hamilton said. “Coach (George) O’Leary and coach (Ralph) Friedgen called me in, and they said, ‘Hey, I think you’re trying to go for the Heisman.’ I wasn’t necessarily doing that, I didn’t necessarily feel that, but they’re coaches and what they see is different from players. I hadn’t seen that in Haynes King (trying to do too much), and that’s what I like the most.”

Eleven years later, Tech had another star quarterback by the name of Joshua Nesbitt, a Greensboro native running coach Paul Johnson’s option offense who was a nightmare for opposing defenses. Nesbitt ran for 1,037 yards and 18 touchdowns in 2009 and threw for 1,701 yards and 10 scores.

So ahead of the 2010 season, Tech launched Nesbitt4Heisman.com. The site featured (mostly) light-hearted video vignettes of Nesbitt of both a person and a football player.

“For me, I just kept the main thing the main thing, just by doing what I normally do throughout the week, throughout the day, getting prepared for a game, because at the end of the day you can’t control how you really move up in the Heisman,” Nesbitt said about his season of Heisman hope. “That’s somebody else’s opinion of you. The best thing that I did, and what (King) can do as well, is just go about your day-to-day. Handle your business on the field and let everything else take care of itself.”

Nesbitt broke his arm Nov. 4, 2010, in a loss at Virginia Tech, an injury that closed the book on any possible chance for Nesbitt to capture college football’s most prized individual award.

Ten years earlier, 28-year-old Chris Weinke, who had spent more than six years playing professional baseball in the minor leagues before enrolling at Florida State in 1997, led FSU to the BCS title game and threw for 4,167 yards and 33 touchdowns.

Weinke, now Tech’s quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator, beat out Josh Heupel, Drew Brees and LaDainian Tomlinson for the 2000 Heisman Trophy.

“In that environment I was a singular-focused guy, I was a one-day-at-a-time guy that felt like the one thing that scared me more than anything else was letting my teammates down,” said Weinke, who tried to recruit King out of high school to play for Tennessee. “When you take that approach, you don’t worry about those exterior things. I’m a firm believer that if you go about your business the right way, you find ways to win games and you perform at a high level, those things take care of themselves.”

As for King, a 6-foot-3, 215-pound native of Longview, Texas, with an undergraduate degree from Texas A&M, the legitimacy of his Heisman candidacy is now very real after eight games.

King ranks second nationally in rushing touchdowns (only Washington running back Jonah Coleman has more), fourth in scoring (10.3 points per game), seventh in completion percentage (72.3%), 10th in total points (72), 12th in total offense (304.4 yards per game), 15th in points responsible for per game (16.6), 18th in rushing yards per game (93), 27th in points responsible for (116), 32nd in rushing yards (651) and 34th in passing efficiency (151.3). His 80.6 completion percentage in Saturday’s win against Syracuse set a Tech single-game record.

And speaking of records, King has been responsible for 81 touchdowns during his Tech tenure, just two fewer of Hamilton’s program record of 83. King will finish his career among the all-time Tech leaders in rushing touchdowns, rushing yards by a quarterback, career passing yards, career completions, career touchdown passes and total offense for a career. King’s 15 career games with at least one passing touchdown and at least one rushing touchdown is already a Tech record.

Saturday will be the 32nd time King has taken the field in white and gold. Of the previous 31, the Jackets have won 21 times.

“I’m impressed,” Nesbitt said. “From where he’s taken the leadership role, to where he’s doing everything, from my eyes, it looks like he’s doing everything that the coaches ask him to do to will the team to win. And the team is just following him.

“From the standpoint if they need him to run the ball, he’s there to run the ball. He’s getting up slowly, but he’s still ticking. If he needs to throw the ball, he’s able to do that as well. I’m very impressed how he’s handling the pressures of being the Georgia Tech quarterback.”

Added Hamilton: “The epitome of a Georgia Tech player. I do understand that he’s a quarterback and I respect his quarterback prowess, his quarterback skills, but when I got to Georgia Tech coach George O’Leary wanted to get back to our roots. And getting back to our roots, this was 1995, coach O’Leary was talking about Tech tough. It was not meaning that you were brutal and not meaning that you’ll beat anybody up. It was that you would go to class, that you would be disciplined, that you would handle the hard things the right way, you would love your teammates, you would make good decisions off the field and be disciplined that way. That’s who Haynes King is. He is the epitome of a Tech player. And an outstanding quarterback.

“I’m so happy and proud of him. What he’s doing, he just reeks of unselfishness and is all about the team. He reeks of a team player with skills and a one-track mind to do whatever he can do to win.”

Ballots for the 2025 Heisman Trophy are scheduled to be distributed Dec. 3 and voting for the award ends Dec. 8 — finalists will be announced that same day. There is also a website for fans to vote for their favorite player.

On Dec. 13, the award’s winner will be announced at the Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room New York City.

Key expects his quarterback to be there for the ceremony.