Notre Dame Football: Results of “Pick 3 Former Offensive Players”

Here are the results from the Twitter poll asking Irish fans to pick three players from nine of the top offensive players in Notre Dame football history:

Earlier this month, I tweeted a graphic that included: Johnny Lujack, John Lattner, Paul Hornung, Joe Montana, Tim Brown, Rocket Ismail, Brady Quinn, Golden Tate, and Quenton Nelson. I then asked Irish fans to pick only three of the top offensive players from the graphic.

When I was choosing which players to include, I started with the best of the best. Then I grouped them all by position and the years they played. I wanted to make sure the different eras and positions were represented.

The players on the final list have won four Heisman Trophies, three Maxwell Awards, a Biletnikoff Award, a Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, and a Joe Moore Award. Not too shabby.

These nine players were also part of four (should have been five) national championship teams during their time at Notre Dame.

The player who received the most votes was Raghib “Rocket” Ismail with 69. Tim Brown was a close second with 63. Joe Montana and Quenton Nelson were tied for third-most votes with 56 each.

Rounding out the list: Brady Quinn had 22 votes, Golden Tate had 21, Paul Hornung had 13, Johnny Lujack had nine, and John Lattner had three.

I was a bit surprised to see that the player who received the most votes, Rocket Ismail, was not one of the four Heisman Trophy winners. However, one could argue that Ismail had a Heisman-worthy season in 1992 when he finished second in the voting for the award.

Some voters also nominated players that were not listed. The most popular write-in vote was former running back and fan-favorite Jerome Bettis, who received the same amount of votes as John Lattner.

Other players that received write-in votes included: Knute Rockne, George Gipp (“The Gipper”), Leon Hart, Tom Gatewood, Allen Pinkett, Rick Mirer, and Aaron Taylor.

I think including Quenton Nelson in the graphic may have deterred fans from writing in votes for players like Zack Martin, Ronnie Stanley, and Mike McGlinchey, who all played under Brian Kelly.

Along those same lines, I think including both Tim Brown and Rocket Ismail prevented votes for a player like Derrick Mayes. As did Golden Tate for Michael Floyd.

This is definitely an imperfect process for determining the best former offensive players. However, in the absence of all sports, fans around the world are all just looking for some content about their favorite team. And this Twitter trend gave us just that.