Desmond Howard

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Desmond Howard earned All-American honors as a tailback during his senior season at St. Joseph High School scoring 18 touchdowns with a record-breaking 5,392 rushing yards during his high school career.

During his college career at the University of Michigan, Howard set or tied five NCAA and 12 Wolverines records. He also led the Big Ten Conference in scoring with 138 points during the 1991 season on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award and Walter Camp Award, earning first-team All-American honors. Howard captured 85 percent of the first-place votes in balloting for the Heisman, the largest margin in history at that time. Howard also earned a bachelor’s degree in communications in 1992.

Howard was selected in the 1st round (4th pick) of the 1992 NFL Draft by the Washington Redskins where he played from 1992–1994. He later played for the Jacksonville Jaguars (1995), Green Bay Packers (1996-1999), Oakland Raiders (1997-1998) and Detroit Lions (1999-2002).

Howard was voted the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl XXXI against the New England Patriots and is the first and currently the only special teams player to win the award. He is one of only four players to win both the Heisman Trophy and Super Bowl MVP: Roger Staubach, Jim Plunkett and Marcus Allen are the others.

In his 11 NFL seasons, Howard caught 123 passes for 1,597 yards, rushed for 68 yards, returned 244 punts for 2,895 yards, and gained 7,595 yards returning 359 kickoffs. He also scored 15 touchdowns (7 receiving, 8 punt returns). Overall, Howard gained 12,155 all-purpose yards in his professional career.

After his NFL playing career, Howard joined ESPN in 2005 as a member of the popular College GameDay crew and works alongside Rece Davis, Kirk Herbstreit and Coach Lee Corso each Saturday during college football season as part of ESPN Gameday. You can watch Howard on set during college football season as the ESPN Gameday crew visits some of the best week in and week out college football games throughout the country. After the college football regular season you can watch Howard as he covers the major bowl games (Sugar, Rose, Fiesta, Orange, and National Championship) on ESPN with the Gameday crew and other ESPN analysts.