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The Heisman Trophy Podcast's off-season search for the origins of elite athleticism continues with Quincy Watts, who won two gold medals at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and now directs the track and field program at USC.

Watts grew up in Detroit, a basketball player who happened to be fast. He traces the spark to the 1984 Olympics, when he watched Carl Lewis win four golds, pointed at the television, and told his father he would win one too. The road there was not straight. He resisted the 400 meters — "the pain business," he calls it — long enough to try out for USC football, and he lost three early seasons to hamstring injuries before deciding, his senior year, to choose excellence over comfort every single day.

He won that gold in an Olympic-record 43.50, then added a second in the 4×400 relay. Host Chris Huston walks him through the final itself: the meditation in the staging area, the moment time seemed to slow on the backstretch, and finding his father in the stands at the line.

Watts also talks coaching — reading the difference between a Michael Norman and a Rai Benjamin, "two Ferraris built different" — and gives a blunt answer to the question at the heart of the series: what separates an elite athlete from a merely very good one.

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The Heisman Trophy Podcast streams every Wednesday during the college football season and monthly during the offseason, and is hosted produced, edited and engineered by Chris Huston. The pod is available on all streaming networks, including Spotify and Apple Music, and features video interviews and bonus content on YouTube and TikTok. We also have a reddit community.

Email us at pod@heisman.com for feedback and inquiries.

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The Heisman Trophy Podcast continues its quest to explore the origins of elite athleticism, this time by delving into the mental habits and routines that distinguish elite athletes from the rest. Elise Devlin, who writes about these topics for The Athletic, joins us to provide key insights as we discover the ways mental performance, routines, and vulnerability contribute to athletic excellence and how these lessons can apply to everyone.

Support the show

The Heisman Trophy Podcast streams every Wednesday during the college football season and monthly during the offseason, and is hosted produced, edited and engineered by Chris Huston. The pod is available on all streaming networks, including Spotify and Apple Music, and features video interviews and bonus content on YouTube and TikTok. We also have a reddit community.

Email us at pod@heisman.com for feedback and inquiries.

Send us Fan Mail

This month's Heisman Trophy Podcast is a mega-episode as we take a journey into the realm of neuroscience and what it tells us about brain development in elite athletes. How much do we know about the brain as it pertains to athleticism? What factors help determine which athletes becomes great and which do not? Are elite athletes wired differently? Is their development due primarily to nature or nurture? Guests include neuroscientist Stephanie Alessi-LaRosa, the head of the sports neurology department at the Hartford HealthCare Ayer Neuroscience Institute, Zach Schonbrun, author of The Performance Cortex, former 5-star quarterback, current ESPN color commentator Max Browne, and class of 2027 right hand pitcher Davis Wilson of Fresno (Calif.) North High, an elite Major League Baseball prospect who is committed to Vanderbilt.

Support the show

The Heisman Trophy Podcast streams every Wednesday during the college football season and monthly during the offseason, and is hosted produced, edited and engineered by Chris Huston. The pod is available on all streaming networks, including Spotify and Apple Music, and features video interviews and bonus content on YouTube and TikTok. We also have a reddit community.

Email us at pod@heisman.com for feedback and inquiries.