Head start: TCU’s Boykin can get a jump on Heisman field in Peach Bowl

The Heisman campaign for Trevone Boykin ended two weeks ago in disappointment.

But it begins again in another week.

The TCU quarterback goes into the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl on Dec. 31 with a chance to become the leading contender for the Heisman Trophy, college football’s most prestigious award. If he has a good game against Ole Miss, showcasing the elusive running and strong-armed passing that led sixth-ranked TCU to an 11-1 record, his name will be one of first on the voters’ minds when next season starts.

“If he can play the way he did this year, can do some of the things he needs to do to get himself back there, he’s in a situation where he can go in being one of the front-runners,” coach Gary Patterson said.

Boykin threw for a school-record 3,714 yards and a school-record 30 touchdown passes. He was third in the country in total offense per game, 363 yards. He caught a 55-yard touchdown pass against Iowa State. He averaged a career-best 4.5 yards per rush, and he was the third quarterback in the past five years — along with Heisman winners Robert Griffin III and Johnny Manziel — to average more than 300 yards passing and 50 yards rushing per game.

But when the invitation list for the Heisman ceremony at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City was announced on Dec. 8, Boykin was not on it.

Only the candidates who appear on a certain percentage of the ballots are invited, and with only three names allowed per ballot, most voters went with Marcus Mariota, Amari Cooper and Melvin Gordon.

The disappointment was clear.

“If they were inviting five people, he would definitely have been there,” left tackle Tayo Fabuluje said. “I was reading an article comparing Trevone’s numbers to some of the guys they have invited in the past, and his numbers were right there if not better. I would have liked to have seen him in New York, but something tells me next year, they won’t be able to deny him that trip.”

Boykin, who was fourth in the voting, has not talked to reporters since the invitees were announced, and the award presented to Oregon’s Mariota.

But he made clear since he became a serious candidate following his seven touchdown passes against Texas Tech and his flip into the end zone against Kansas State that simply being considered Heisman material was an honor.

“We kind of laugh about it, joke about it, because who would have thought? Nobody was thinking it last year that I could be up for the Heisman this year,” he said after the K-State game, a 41-20 victory for the Horned Frogs on prime-time national television. “I’m blessed and honored to even be mentioned with those guys. Overall, I’m a team guy, and the only thing I really want is what’s best for the team.”

Boykin was the unlikeliest of Heisman candidates. He was a quarterback in high school but recruited as a receiver to TCU. He played running back, also, in his first two years. But he had to re-learn his old position on short notice when TCU lost Casey Pachall to suspension and injuries.

It was an up-and-down struggle. But Boykin won the job outright this season and thrived in the Horned Frogs’ new “Air Raid” offense under new coordinators Doug Meacham and Sonny Cumbie.

“We always knew he had it in him, but he surprised a lot of people,” Fabuluje said. “But we always knew he was capable of doing that.”

Now can he do it again?

“It’s how you finish, not how you start,” Patterson said. “That’s what I told him. And the biggest way to do that is to win. You can win ballgames, and people notice. You put up a lot of yardage and you don’t win, then it doesn’t make any difference.”

No one knows how the 2015 Heisman campaign will finish.

But everyone will see how it starts.

This story was originally published December 23, 2014 at 8:18 PM with the headline "Head start: TCU’s Boykin can get a jump on Heisman field in Peach Bowl."