How Houston's Andre Ware won a Heisman Trophy that no one saw coming in 1989

The headline in the Los Angeles Times read, “Invisible Ware Gets Hardware.”
 
The New York Times? The first paragraph from its story read, “Andre Ware, the University of Houston quarterback whose passing exploits had been all but drowned out by a chorus of derision, silenced his critics yesterday, when he was named the winner of the 1989 Heisman Trophy as the nation’s outstanding college football player.”
 
When you look at it today, with roughly 30 years of hindsight, there was no reason why Andre Ware should have been anywhere near the Heisman conversation. Has any Heisman winner had more obstacles to overcome?
 
Of course, that’s what makes his win so impressive.
 
For one, an African-American quarterback had never won college football’s highest honor, which alone makes Ware’s selection in 1989 notable. The award had been presented for 54 years before Ware’s history-making season.
 
Beyond that, Houston’s football program was playing under NCAA sanctions in 1989. Even though all of the violations had predated Ware’s arrival, one has to think that some Heisman voters might be wary of casting a ballot for a player whose team was not eligible for postseason play.
 
As part of those sanctions, Houston was banned from having its football games televised that season, a penalty that is unheard of today, and one that seems impossible to overcome. While players like Anthony Thompson of Indiana, Major Harris of West Virginia, Tony Rice of Notre Dame and Emmitt Smith of Florida were appearing on television on a regular basis, the nation largely had to read about Ware’s performances in the newspaper.
 
“I certainly wouldn’t have believed I could be in this position today,” said Ware on the day he won the award. He learned of his win, ironically, on television; he had just finished leading Houston to a season-ending 64-0 win against Rice, throwing for 400 yards and two touchdowns.
 
So how did he end up winning it?
“When I was in school, most African-American quarterbacks were recruited to play other positions,” Ware told ESPN. “Just because of the color of your skin, you weren’t smart enough to play that position. That really hurt and cut deep.”
 
Ware had planned to attend the University of Texas out of high school and was recruited by the Longhorns, but was projected as a defensive player. He would have ended up in Austin were it not for the brutal honesty that Ware heard from the Longhorns at the time.
 
“I was going to Texas,” Ware told ESPN. “All they had to do was lie to me and tell me I was going to play quarterback once I got there. Thank goodness they told me the truth that they were going to move me to defense.”
 
Ware, who grew up in the Houston area and attended Dickinson High School before spending one season at Alvin Community College, decided to stay close to home when it came time to enroll at a four-year school.
 
“The University of Houston promised me an opportunity,” Ware said. “And they asked me to run the run-and-shoot.”
 
He took over as the Cougars’ starter in 1988, posting respectable numbers. He threw for 2,507 yards and 25 touchdowns with eight interceptions, establishing himself as a bona fide Division I quarterback, but giving little indication of the season that was to come.
 
In his junior year, Ware passed for an NCAA-record 4,699 yards and fell one touchdown shy of the national record of 46 TDs.
 
“We were innovative and one of the first teams in the country to do what we were doing,” Ware said. His skill as a decision-maker and a passer fit perfectly with the Cougars’ multi-receiver set, which was something of an outlier in what had been an age of I-formation, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust football in the Southwest.
 
He led Houston to a 9-2 record as the Cougars finished No. 14 in the Associated Press poll. They suffered a four-point loss at Texas A&M and dropped a six-point decision to Arkansas. That’s it.
 
Their average result was a 53.5-point win, the best of any team in the nation.
 
Critics suggested that Ware and Houston were posting gaudy numbers against inferior opponents. There was a 69-0 win against UNLV in the season-opener, a 65-7 victory against Temple, and perhaps most notably, the 95-21 result against an SMU team that was in a full rebuilding mode.  Ware played only 12 minutes against the Mustangs, yet still threw for 517 yards (an NCAA record for a half which stands to this day) and six touchdowns.
 
There was a 66-10 win against Baylor, but the Bears had the nation’s top pass defense entering that game and allowed only eight touchdown passes in the entire 1989 season - six of which came from Ware.
 
The moment in which Ware won the Heisman - surrounded by his teammates and head coach following the season finale against Rice - said it all. He raised his arms in jubilation for a second, then immediately embraced his teammates.
 
“It’s a full circle,” Ware said later to ESPN. “I had high school coaches telling me that I wouldn’t get the opportunity to play quarterback in college. But when you tell me I can’t do it, I’ll go to the bitter end to prove you wrong.”
 
Upon retirement as a player following a professional career in the NFL and CFL, Ware has remained in the game as one of ESPN’s top college football analysts. He joined ESPN in 2003, worked primarily on the SEC Network beginning in 2014 and has moved back to a slate of nationally televised games for ESPN channels in recent years.
 
He remains, as most Heisman winners do, an ambassador of sorts for college football and a proud member of the game’s most exclusive fraternity.
 
“We all understand the process that we have all gone through to win the Heisman,” Ware told ESPN. “It takes a tremendous amount of concentration. You’re answering questions day-in and day-out as you lead into the week of to the Heisman. We have all lived in each other’s shoes.”
 
Except in 1989, Andre Ware didn’t walk in anyone’s shoes. He set the path himself.