Will Cam Newton's Heisman win be the most lopsided ever? It's going to come close.

If you're tuning in to Saturday night's Heisman ceremony, either you're a fan of anticlimax, or you're really looking forward to the SMU scandal documentary that follows it on ESPN. Because there are no surprises to be found in New York: Auburn quarterback Cam Newton is going to win, he's going to win big, and he's not going to say anything interesting about, you know, all that. Where darkhorse Ndamukong Suh's presence made last year's Heisman finish one of the most dramatic in years, the only drama this year is how lopsided Newton's victory is going to be.

The answer depends how you count. In terms of raw numbers, no winner has ever received more votes or total points than USC running back O.J. Simpson, who racked 2,903 points on 1,200 ballots in 1968 – both records that will probably stand forever, because the voter pool hasn't approached that size in decades. According to the obsessive Heisman bean counters at StiffarmTrophy.com, the widest margin of victory in Heisman history in relative terms actually (and ironically) belongs to USC running back Reggie Bush, who picked up 2,541 of 2,768 possible points in 2005, or 91.8 percent of the points he would have received if he'd been voted No. 1 on every single ballot.

If you're one of those people who considers Bush's victory null and void after this summer, the next-best margin belongs to the guy who followed him: Ohio State quarterback Troy Smith, who garnered 91.6 percent of the maximum point total in 2006, just before being pantsed by Florida in the BCS Championship Game.

Newton's score should at least find its way into that ballpark. As of Friday afternoon, StiffarmTrophy.com's latest projection has Newton picking up about 84 percent of the points he'd earn in a unanimous vote with 173 ballots – almost 20 percent of the total – in their database. If that holds, it would put Newton in fourth place all-time for overall point share, behind 1998 winner Ricky Williams of Texas.

So far, only 13 of the 173 public ballots have left Newton off entirely, mostly for sanctimonious reasons surrounding the pay-for-play scandal that's loomed over his and Auburn's heads for the last month. In the end, the turmoil will cost Newton his father's presence at the ceremony, and may keep him from the most lopsided victory in the trophy's history. But it's not going to keep him from a smashing win.

It's no coincidence that his over-the-top triumph comes so fast on the heels of the other Heisman routs. In fact, there may be no greater evidence of college football's gradual emergence from its various regional enclaves into a truly national sport than the change in the voting patterns for its most prestigious award.

Over the last 20 years, only four Heisman winners – Danny Weurffel in 1996, Eric Crouch in 2001, Carson Palmer in 2002 and Mark Ingram last year – have finished with fewer than 50 percent of possible votes, and all but Crouch came close to fifty. Meanwhile, fully half of the recipients since 1990 have won with at least a 60-percent share. Before 1980, that was unheard of: For the trophy's first 45 years, almost everyone finished with a share below 50 percent – usually well below – and only Simpson and Tony Dorsett in 1976 racked up more than 60 percent.

The Heisman was first televised, by the way, in 1977, and ESPN launched as the first 24-hour sports channel in 1979. As much as we still love the hometown heroes, they've never looked quite the same.

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Matt Hinton is on Twitter: Follow him @DrSaturday.

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