A ballot that actually counts
The Heisman Trophy has gone to the best player in college football every year since 1935. In more than nine decades, a fan vote has never carried formal weight. That changes this season.
Heisman officials unveiled a platform earlier today, hopefuls.heisman.com, that will collect daily fan votes from Sept. 9 onward. The tally gets revealed live on ESPN during conference championship weekend, and the players finishing first, second and third become the first official ballot cast in the 2026 race.
“We surveyed college football fans, and they told us clearly that they want more data on more players and more ways to engage with the Heisman Trophy throughout the season,” Heisman Trophy Trust CEO Jeff Price said.
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Data doing the filtering
The site carries official player data alongside updated player ratings from the EA Sports College Football game. Quarterbacks and running backs will always leave the deeper statistical footprint, so advanced metrics sit next to the raw numbers to give players at other positions a route into the conversation.
Carnegie Mellon’s Sports Analytics Center is building the weighting model, with Next League, Yangaroo and CLC also involved. “We’re creating a methodology to dynamically weight fan votes based on data observed throughout the season,” CMSAC director Ron Yurko said. Votes arrive daily; how much each week’s batch counts will move with what the season produces.
The race it feeds into
Fernando Mendoza took the 2025 award at Indiana, and every player who lines up this autumn starts the year on the Hopefuls list. “Every player who steps onto the field this fall begins the season as a Heisman Hopeful with the chance to earn the award on the field of play,” Price said. The distance between a preseason favourite and a genuine contender now gets measured in public, week by week, from Sept. 9.
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