A $100 dollar bet on Nick Bosa to win the 2018 Heisman Trophy would pay out $6,600 in December if he took home the hardware.
To put that in perspective, those are significantly worse odds than Vegas bookmakers give the Cleveland Browns of making the Super Bowl this season, which they set at about 40 to 1.
The reason the odds are so steep isn't because Bosa won't be one of the top players in the country next season, but because given history, he has effectively no chance simply because he doesn't play the right position, or even on the right side of the ball.
The Heisman Trophy goes almost exclusively to offensive players, and usually a quarterback. 15 of the last 18 winners have been quarterbacks and only one defensive player in history has won the award, and it was due in large part to his ability as a returner.
Given those trends, Bosa's chances don't too look good, but he's still one of just 30 players to even have Heisman odds listed on Bovada, and is tied with two other players for the 26th best odds to win the award.
Even though a defensive lineman has never won the Heisman Trophy, Bosa has better odds to win it than 99.76 percent of players in Division I football. But to actually win the award, logic tells us Bosa would need to have the best season of any defensive lineman ever, since no lineman has been able to win it thus far.
The one who got the closest was Pittsburgh's Hugh Green. Green finished as the runner-up in 1980 after recording an absurd 17 sacks and seven forced fumbles.
Since then, there have been a number of dominant defensive linemen, some with even more impressive numbers than Green's, who haven't even sniffed the Heisman Trophy.
Terrell Suggs had one of the most impressive seasons of a defensive lineman to date during his junior season in 2002. Suggs finished the season with 24 sacks – which remains an FBS record – and also had 31.5 tackles for loss and forced six fumbles. He won the Outland Trophy, Hendricks Award, Lombardi Award and Nagurski Award but didn't even finish in the top 10 of the Heisman voting.
Another more recent dominant force on the defensive line was Nebraska's Ndamukong Suh, who is widely considered the most dominant defensive lineman, and maybe even the best overall defensive player, in college football history.
From Bill Connelly of SBNation:
Suh recorded 24 tackles for loss, 12 sacks, 26 quarterback hurries, 10 pass breakups, one pick, and three blocked kicks in 2009. He was so dominant that NU head coach Bo Pelini was almost able to play a permanent dime formation; Suh was a one-man offensive line destroyer, and Pelini almost never had to blitz. Just drop about seven guys into coverage, then pounce on wayward passes when the quarterback still gets hit in about 1.5 seconds.
Nebrsaka allowed 10.4 points per game and four yards per play. This was a wrecking machine, and it all revolved around a single player.
Suh won every defensive award for which he was nominated – the Outland Trophy, the Lombardi Award, the Nagurski Trophy and the Bednarik Award – and became the first defensive player ever to be named the AP Player of the Year.
Still, Suh didn't win the Heisman, nor did he even get all that close, finishing fourth in 2009 behind Mark Ingram, Toby Gerhart and Colt McCoy.
To win the Heisman Trophy, or really even be a serious candidate, Bosa will need to have a significantly more impressive season than than any defensive lineman before him. That means topping Suh, Suggs, Green and other dominant players like Elvis Dumervil, Glenn Dorsey, Derrick Thomas or Dwight Freeney.
To make an educated guess based on the production of those above, Bosa would likely need somewhere in the realm of 30 sacks, 40 tackles for a loss and quite a few forced turnovers to garner serious consideration. He would need to flat-out dominate every game not only statistically, but with eye-popping plays like Jadeveon Clowney's hit against Michigan.
It's not impossible, but it hasn't exactly been done before. And even if he did put up those numbers, there's still a strong chance the award goes to a running back or a quarterback anyway, as it has for the past 20 times.
Anything short of the most impressive season we've ever seen from a defensive lineman will leave Bosa without the Heisman Trophy. So if you're looking for a big payout on a Buckeye to win it, perhaps you should throw your money at Dwayne Haskins or J.K. Dobbins instead.
