For the second year in a row, the Maxwell Trophy took a different direction than the Heisman, choosing Notre Dame’s Brady Quinn over Ohio State’s Troy Smith. Once again, the Maxwell opted for a quarterback who put up quality numbers against the best opposition under the toughest circumstances. In doing so, the Maxwell Trophy gained a measure of prestige among the college fans who won’t soon forget that their 2005 pick was a fellow named Vince Young.

With the returns on college football awards in, it’s a good time to look at all these awards and ask how the sponsoring organizations might consolidate their efforts to bring some sense to what, in the last couple of decades, has become colossal chaos.

Let’s start with the Heisman Trophy. The man it was named for, John W. Heisman, seems an unlikely candidate for such an honor; in the words of Dan Jenkins, Heisman’s only accomplishment was “the invention of the center snap.” Two other trophies claim to select “the outstanding college football player in the nation,” and both seem to be better named for the purpose: the Walter Camp, in honor of the father of football, and the Maxwell, named for college star and columnist, Robert “Tiny” Maxwell. To confuse matters, many coaches, sports information directors, and press representatives vote for all three.

Why is the Heisman best known? Probably for two reasons. Heisman, together with the legendary Yale football star of the 1890s, W.W. “Pudge” Heffelfinger, was instrumental in founding New York’sTouchdown Club. The nucleus of this group formed the first Heisman selection committee in 1935.

The Walter Camp Foundation didn’t get started till two years later. The Maxwell Trophy made a major mistake when their group limited their voting to Northeastern players in 1935–36 before going national in 1937. Also, the Maxwell people were centered in Philadelphia rather than in the nation’s press and broadcasting center, NewYork.

Heffelfinger thought the idea of picking a single outstanding player among 22 positions was nonsense. “There are hundreds of excellent players and trying to rate one above another is an impossible job,” he wrote in his 1952 autobiography, “This Was Football.”

Almost in response to Pudge, numerous awards have sprung up to honor players at different positions. The Bronco Nagurski Award is given annually by the Football Writers Association of America/Charlotte Touchdown Club to the “Outstanding Defensive Player” (this year Ohio State’s James Laurinaitis). The Chuck Bednarik Award names “The College Defensive Football Player of the Year.” (Penn State’s Paul Posluszny.)

The Outland Trophy honors “The Nation’s Best Interior Offensive or Defensive Lineman.” (Joe Thomas, Wisconsin). The Vince Lombardi/Rotary Award honors the offensive and defensive lineman who “best exemplifies the discipline of Vince Lombardi.”(Lombardi was never a head coach at the college level, but he sure sounds like a great coach to name any award after.) This year’s winner was Michigan’s LaMarr Woodley.

There are at least a dozen other awards, including the Fred Biletnikoff Award for wide receiver (Calvin Johnson, Georgia Tech) and the Jim Thorpe Award for defensive back. (Aaron Ross, Texas). But none of them receives a fraction of the press attention afforded the Heisman. Most of these awards are announced on ESPN — this year on December 7 during the Home Depot College Awards Show. But if they want comparable status with the Heisman, they should get together and hire a New York-based public relations firm and announce their winners on the same day as the Shipman. This might force everyone to sit down and work out a sensible solution to the growing awards chaos.

And here’s a word to the wise for the Heisman folks: The Maxwell Trophy people now recognize the changes in the game that are more than four decades old and honor both an outstanding offensive and defensive player — that’s the Bednarik Award, which is also chosen by the Maxwell voters.

It’s time to acknowledge that football players no longer wear leather helmets.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”