SEATTLE — It’s worth stating first: Mario Bailey always believed Desmond Howard deserved the Heisman Trophy in 1991. Bailey would put his own receiving statistics that season against anybody’s, but he knows Howard’s work as a returner put him over the top and the Heisman electorate overwhelmingly agreed. Howard won the trophy with 640 first-place votes; nobody else had more than 29.

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The Washington Huskies did send a player to the Heisman ceremony that season, but it wasn’t Bailey. Junior defensive tackle Steve Emtman, winner of both the Outland Trophy and the Lombardi Award, finished fourth in the Heisman voting and second in first-place votes. Bailey was co-Offensive Player of the Year in the Pac-10 and set single-season UW records for receptions (68), yards (1,163) and touchdowns (18, which still stands). He was a consensus first-team All-American. He just wasn’t a Heisman candidate.

Howard, meanwhile, scored 23 total touchdowns in 11 games for a Michigan team that won the Big Ten, ranked No. 4 nationally and carried a 10-1 record into the 1992 Rose Bowl against unbeaten Washington. He didn’t need a signature moment to win the award, but he sure had one, returning a punt 93 yards for a touchdown during a 31-3 rout of archrival Ohio State, then striking the Heisman pose in the end zone. Legendary play-by-play man Keith Jackson was at the microphone for ABC. As Howard crossed the goal line, maybe two seconds before his celebratory stiff-arm, Jackson said, “Hellooo, Heisman,” among the most recognizable calls of his career.

Say the words “Heisman pose,” and nearly every college football fan will think first of Desmond Howard.

Say it to a Husky fan, and they’ll tell you about Mario Bailey and a sunny New Year’s Day in Pasadena.

Though Howard enjoyed a far greater profile, it was easy to compare him and Bailey in the run-up to the Rose Bowl. They were perhaps the nation’s top two receivers that season and put up similar numbers. Both were considered small for their position — Bailey stood 5 feet 9 and 157 pounds, Howard 5-9 and 176. “The only difference between me and Desmond Howard,” Bailey told the New York Times that December, “is that he’s at Michigan and he returns punts and kickoffs.”

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Bailey tired of the talk. In a Kitsap Sun story headlined “Desmond vs. Mario” published a day before the game, Bailey was quoted as saying, “I’m sick of hearing about Desmond Howard. I’m tired of being compared to him. He’s a totally different person than me. He’s in a totally different program.” Bailey said Howard also rubbed him the wrong way during a few interactions that week. “We had dinner together. I was a captain. He was a captain,” Bailey told The Athletic recently. “He had been very arrogant, very stand-offish.”

The Huskies hadn’t allowed more than 21 points in a game all season, tearing through the Pac-10 schedule with one of the most dominant defenses in conference history. They knew beating Michigan likely assured at least a share of the national championship with unbeaten, top-ranked Miami. And they knew which Wolverine posed the greatest threat to that goal. “Since Nov. 23, when we knew we would be playing them,” cornerback Dana Hall told the Los Angeles Times, “we knew we had to do one thing: Stop Desmond Howard.”

That’s what they did. Howard caught at least three passes in each of Michigan’s first 11 games and caught a touchdown pass in all but one. Against the Huskies, he caught one pass for 35 yards, though it did set up Michigan’s first touchdown. He rushed once for 15 yards, returned three punts for 21 yards and returned three kickoffs for 39 yards. That was that.

The Huskies noticed on film that most of Michigan’s opponents gave Howard plenty of room at the line of scrimmage to avoid getting beat over the top. “We were going to be on him,” Hall told the Miami Herald, “and it was like he didn’t know how to react.” The Huskies regularly rolled safety Shane Pahukoa or a linebacker toward Howard, suggesting double- or triple-coverage even if they were playing him straight-up. Michigan quarterback Elvis Grbac absorbed five sacks and was 13-of-26 for 130 yards, finding few options with Howard mostly covered up. “I think the thing we tried to do with Grbac,” then-UW coach Don James told reporters, “was to let him know we knew where No. 21 was, and that we had two guys on him.”

In the first quarter, the game still scoreless, Grbac tried a deep throw to Howard in the middle of the field. Pahukoa and cornerback Walter Bailey (no relation to Mario) had him bracketed. Pahukoa tipped the ball. Walter Bailey intercepted it. As he jogged off the field, he flipped a quick, almost subtle Heisman pose toward the sideline, an obvious jab at Howard’s pose against Ohio State.

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It happened so fast, it might have been easy to miss. Mario Bailey didn’t see it, but heard about it later. By then, he’d stolen the show with a pose of his own, one that immediately became part of Husky lore.

The Huskies scored the game’s first touchdown, led 13-7 at halftime and took a 27-7 lead early in the fourth quarter. When Michigan came up short on a fourth-down try at its 38-yard line with a little more than 13 minutes to play, Bailey knew what was coming next. Offensive coordinator Keith Gilbertson, he said, always called for a streak route after a turnover.

UW quarterback Mark Brunell took his drop and lofted a pass up the right sideline for Bailey, who had beaten his man. On the replay, you can see Brunell skipping backward after letting it go, like a jump-shooter trying to will a 3-pointer through the basket. Bailey plucked the ball just above the ground as he rolled into the blue-painted end zone, and the official raised his arms to signal a touchdown. Today, that play probably gets reviewed because it appeared the ball might have hit the ground as Bailey collected it. No matter. In one motion, Bailey rose to his feet, placed his left hand over the middle of his chest and extended his right arm outward in a stiff-arm pose just before teammate Aaron Pierce mobbed him.

The touchdown gave the Huskies a 34-7 lead. They won 34-14 and kneeled out the clock at Michigan’s 5-yard line.

“It was like in a basketball game when somebody shoots the last-second shot and calls ‘game’ as it releases from their hand,” Bailey said. “That was pretty much game over.” He sprinted off the field after his touchdown catch, pumping his fist and jumping up and down, victory and an unbeaten season assured.

He swears the Heisman pose wasn’t necessarily premeditated, but did tell reporters after the game that family members, friends and even strangers had urged him to strike it if he scored a touchdown. He told his mother and stepfather that he would only do it in the fourth quarter and only if the game was wrapped up.

“It just came at the perfect time. It was a gift from God,” Bailey told The Athletic. “If it was pre-planned — I tell people, look at my pose. It’s not the proper pose. If I had practiced it and was prepared, it would have been perfect. But mine was like, ‘Gotcha.’ ”

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Bailey finished with six catches for 126 yards and a touchdown, compared to Howard’s single catch for 35 yards. After the ensuing kickoff, the ABC telecast displayed a graphic comparing the two receivers, with a freeze-frame of Bailey’s pose in the background.

On the sideline, Bailey and his teammates hammed it up for the TV cameras. Then, suddenly, “it was like the red sea parted.” James, never one for showboating, was making his way toward Bailey. But he came in peace. “He came and shook my hand on the sideline during the game, and said, ‘Great job, Marry-oh,” Bailey said, emphasizing James’ unique mispronunciation of his first name. “During the game, while I’m sitting on the bench, hamming it up, interrupted everything to come shake my hand and say great job. I really knew the game was over then.”

The pose became its own story, its own headline in the Rose Bowl aftermath. Bailey, ever the underdog, told reporters that he wanted to “show people, particularly back East, that there’s another good receiver out here, and he wears No. 5, not No. 21.” Still, Bailey called Howard “probably the greatest receiver I’ve seen in college football,” and maintained that Howard deserved the Heisman. In a clever retort to Bailey’s pose, Howard remarked, “He’s invited to my house to look at the real thing.” He also credited UW’s defense for its aggressive coverage, and said he thought the Huskies deserved the national championship.

Howard went on to an 11-year NFL career, winning MVP of Super Bowl XXXI with the Green Bay Packers after the 1996 season. He’s worked as an analyst on ESPN’s “College GameDay” since 2005. “GameDay” made its first trip to UW in 2013, for the Huskies’ game against the No. 2 Oregon Ducks. Howard had little interest in discussing his history with UW or Bailey in the week leading up to that game. Asked then about Bailey’s pose, Howard replied, “I had a pretty good career after that, so I’m good. It’s always good to be imitated. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.” After all, Howard struck the pose first, and he won the Heisman in a landslide. His celebration against Ohio State is among college football’s iconic moments.

Nevertheless, Bailey and the Huskies created their own iconic moment on Jan. 1, 1992, in the shadows of the San Gabriel Mountains. He says fans bring it up to him “all the time.”

“I call it a gift and a curse,” Bailey said. “I tell people, ‘I’m not striking the pose. That’s not going to happen.’ Usually, I make them strike a pose, and I’ll take a picture of them doing a pose. I’m not doing it. I still don’t know how to do it correctly, so I’m not going to do it.”

The two haven’t spoken since that day, Bailey said, but he enjoys watching Howard on television.

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“I think he does a phenomenal job on TV,” Bailey said. “I think he’s the best-dressed and very articulate. I like his insights. I’m a fan of his on ‘College GameDay.’ It was just a competitive moment in the moment. That’s it.”

(Top photo of Bailey: Stephen Dunn / Allsport via Getty Images)

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