Most Heisman Trophy winners usually have a defining game or play.

For Notre Dame’s Tim Brown, the school’s seventh and most recent Heisman winner, it was his back-to-back punt returns for touchdowns in 1987 against that year's Rose Bowl champ, Michigan State, in a 31-8 Irish rout.

For 1953 Notre Dame Heisman Trophy winner John Lattner, who died last Friday at age 83, maybe the most talked about game in his career is the infamous one at Purdue in his junior year (1952). That was where Lattner fumbled five times — yet he doesn’t mind rehashing the details.

“It’s the only record I have left at Notre Dame,” Lattner often stated with his typical humor or self-deprication.

The game has become somewhat of an urban legend over the years, but some fiction also has been involved.

Fiction: Lujack’s fumbles cost the Irish the game. In fact, the unranked Irish upset No. 9 Purdue (that year’s co-Big Ten champs), 26-14 at West Lafayette.

In one of the most bizarre games Notre Dame ever played in, the Irish fumbled a school-record 10 times – but Purdue coughed up the ball 11 times. Notre Dame ended up recovering 15 of those 21 miscues, including a touchdown by Irish right tackle Joe Bush while pouncing on a Lattner fumble in Purdue’s end zone.

In that same game, the Chicago native Lattner snared a 47-yard touchdown pass from quarterback Ralph Guglielmi on the last play of the first half to give the Irish a 20-7 lead. Even after a solid victory against a Top 10 foe, though, Lattner may have made his best move once he came off the field.

“I didn’t go back on the train with the team because I figured Coach [Frank] Leahy was going to throw me off of it,” Lattner said. “My brother drove me back to Chicago, but that wasn’t too unusual because if we had a game nearby, we’d drive back to Chicago for the weekend and report for classes on Monday.”

In the team meeting that Monday, Leahy spoke to the team about a certain back who was “a traitor to Our Lady’s school because of five fumbles.”

“I was ready to take off like a bandit after the meeting when I heard Leahy say, ‘Ah, Mr. Lattner, I’d like to have a little chat with you.’ He said, ‘John, I have not been able to prepare for the upcoming game because of your fumblitis. Why would a boy of your caliber fumble five times?’ I told him I couldn’t explain it.

“He said, ‘Ah, John, back in Chicago, do you have any girl problems that would cause you to fumble five times?’ ”

No, that wasn’t it.

“Then he said, ‘When you were in Fenwick High School in Chicago, did you ever go to the racetrack with your dad?’ He must have known I did because I did like to play the horses with my dad on Saturday mornings.

“When I said I did place an occasional bet he said, ‘John, last Saturday, did you have a wager with the bookies on the West Side?’ He thought I was betting on losing – but we ended up winning by a pretty decent margin against a team ranked ahead of us.”

Satisfied that the problems weren’t mental or a lack of scruples, Leahy handed Lattner a football and ordered him to carry it with him at all times.

“He said, ‘If I see you around campus without this football, you’ll lose your scholarship here at Notre Dame,’ ” Lattner said. “One of my teammates put a handle on the football to make it a little easier to carry around. I did that for a whole week. I went to classes with it, slept with it…I did everything he wanted me to do. I didn’t get a lot of snickers from the fellow students, but the professors thought it was pretty cute.

“I carried it all week because I truly thought I might lose my scholarship. Leahy was a man of his word. I just put my hand on the handle and carried my books.”

Fiction: It didn’t solve all the fumbling problems (the Irish lost a record seven fumbles in a 21-3 loss later that year to Michigan State), but eventually the fundamentals improved. Led by Lattner, the Irish finished No. 3 in the Associated Press poll in 1952, and No. 2 in 1953, his senior Heisman year, with a 9-0-1 ledger.

“I might have fumbled once my senior year,” Lattner recalled.

Fact: To err is human. To get a handle on it and still become the nation’s most esteemed football player is divine.