via Netflix
Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young is on Netflix now, and one of the most honorable things Young ever did barely comes up in it.
In 2005, Reggie Bush won the Heisman Trophy and Young finished second. It wasn’t close on the ballot. Bush pulled 784 first-place votes to Young’s 79. A month later, Young got the last word anyway, running for 200 yards and the game-winner as Texas beat Bush’s USC 41-38 for the national title, in the game plenty of people still call the greatest ever played.
Then came 2010. The NCAA ruled Bush ineligible for the 2005 season over improper benefits, and he forfeited the Heisman. It remains the only vacated trophy in the award’s history. The natural move was to hand it down to the runner-up, so the Heisman Trust came to Vince Young.
He said no.
Sit with the spot he was in. He’d lost the award to Bush, then beaten him on the biggest stage the sport has. If anyone had the standing to say “sure, I’ll take it,” it was Young. He didn’t blink.
When I got him on the phone last week, I asked why. The answer came easy.
“A lot of people be like, ‘Vince, you should have took the Heisman,'” Young tells BroBible in an exclusive interview. “But in my mind, and the way I’m raised, he beat me fair and square. He won it, and that trophy belongs to him.”
“That’s Reggie’s Trophy”
For Young, it was never really about the hardware. It was about Bush.
“It’s the respect that I have for Reggie. He’s one of the best running backs I’ve ever seen in my life,” Young said. “And when I had the opportunity to meet him in person, he was even a better person.”
He wanted Bush to hear it straight from him.
“I wanted him to know that, from me and my family and a lot of people that grew up watching him, you’re the Heisman in our eyes that year,” Young said. “Even though I was the runner-up, he won it fair and square.”
Bush has told this story himself, and it still gets to him. On the All the Smoke podcast, he recalled the Trust coming to Young, and Young answering flat out: “That’s Reggie’s trophy.” Bush called it a kind of love that even some of the people closest to him never showed.
He Called It Years Before The Heisman Trust Did
The twist is that Young was right, and everyone else took 14 years to catch up. In April 2024, the Heisman Trust reinstated Bush’s 2005 trophy, pointing to how much college sports had changed in the NIL era. The benefits that cost Bush his Heisman wouldn’t turn a head today.
Young had that figured out a long time ago.
“It shouldn’t have been taken anyway,” Young said. “He deserved it. He worked his butt off for it. He earned it.”
And he’s got no patience for the process that stripped it.
“A lot of stuff goes on in college football, and it’s all over the place right now, to this day,” Young said. “Whatever they got to do in the business world or in court, that’s where it’s supposed to stay. But a lot of players and coaches across the United States, they know exactly who that Heisman Trophy was that year. And it was Reggie Bush.”
Two of the best to ever do it, tied together by one trophy and one unforgettable night in Pasadena. Bush finally has his Heisman back. Young never wanted it in the first place.
Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young is out on Netflix now.