Who votes for the Heisman: How college football's best player is chosen

The Heisman Trophy is often the subject of a fair amount of controversy. Fans and commentators will sometimes shake their heads and try to disclaim the results. But rarely do fans try to peak behind the curtain and see how the Heisman winner is actually selected.

This year, Fernando Mendoza, Diego Pavia, Julian Sayin, and Jeremiyah Love are the finalists awaiting the ultimate decision. But whose decision is it? And how does the vote avoid regional (and conference) bias?

The Heisman Voters

The Heisman Trophy is voted on by a conglomerate of 870 media members, the 59 (or so) living former Heisman Trophy winners, and one aggregated fan vote from the general public. So with media members doing the heavy lifting, here's a few details on that front.

Details on the Media Vote

First, the media members are split evenly between six geographic regions of the country: Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, Far West. Of course, the Heisman candidates this year all played for teams from the middle of the country, so there's probably less of a concern about geographically-based picks.

From year to year, the different regions provide differing results. 2024 was fairly unusual, in that it was a close race between Travis Hunter and Ashton Jeanty (final totals were 2,231 points for Hunter and 2.017 for Jeanty). But Hunter won five of the six regional voting totals, with Jeanty squeaking past him 357-354 in the Far West vote.

Former Heisman Winner/Voters

As for the former Heisman winners, that's obviously a small and exclusive club. Yes, Travis Hunter gets a vote this year. The oldest-living Heisman winner is Pete Dawkins, who won the award while playing for Army in 1958. The 87 year old Dawkins likewise gets a vote.

The Fan Vote

The aggregated fan vote gives the fans a combined total of 1/930th or so of the voting power. Votes could be from the Heisman's website or social media. Fans were allowed to vote once per day via each mode of ballot.

Now, the common feature among all of these votes is that three selection slots are offered. Each voter choses the top three picks, and those are then calculated on a 3-2-1 basis. From that total, the Heisman winner is determined.