Controversy be damned, Auburn’s Cameron Newton won the 2010 Heisman Trophy by a landslide. And them folks are still hating on his athletic excellence.
Auburn’s controversial star quarterback won the Heisman Trophy in a landslide vote Saturday night. He was just too good to resist, so good, in fact, he turned three other deserving finalists – Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, Oregon running back LaMichael James and Boise State quarterback Kellen Moore – into witnesses of his coronation at the Best Buy Theatre in Times Square.
Newton was listed first on 729 ballots – 93% – and had 2,263 points, finishing far ahead of Luck, who finished with 78 first-place votes and 1,079 points.
After his name was announced, Newton went over and hugged his mother Jackie, his two brothers and Auburn coach Gene Chizik. He thanked both of his parents. “My parents do a lot of things behind the scenes that go unnoticed,” he said, committing a Freudian slip.
The Tigers’ immensely talented, 6-6, 250-pound junior won by a huge margin despite an NCAA investigation that determined his father Cecil had solicited money through a third party from Mississippi State in a failed pay-for-play scheme when Newton was being recruited out of junior college last year. Even though the NCAA ruled neither Newton nor Auburn had any knowledge of his father’s dealings, that clouded the issue and brought back painful memories of USC’s Reggie Bush returning his 2005 Heisman Trophy last summer after the NCAA determined he was ineligible that season because his parents had received free rent on a house and a car from two L.A. sports agents seeking to sign their son. Once burned, twice wary.
Some 105 Heisman voters omitted Newton from their ballots completely, making the argument that he failed to meet the standards of the Heisman Trophy’s mission statement – a pursuit of excellence with integrity – and pointing to past character flaws that occurred during the two years Newton spent at Florida. While in Gainesville, Newton was arrested for the theft of a laptop computer and faced a student judiciary hearing after he was caught cheating on at least two occasions.
