I don't know about his specific claim about the 'living in the hood' story, but ESPN aggressively pushed Woodson's Heisman campaign because they televised the Rose Bowl that year (ABC), while Tennessee played in the Orange Bowl on CBS. ESPN had way more power of sports opinion back then than they do now. It was non-stop Woodson propaganda for weeks just so they could make more $$$.
And then of course, throw that campaign on top of the media's long-standing Big 10 / Midwestern bias (which is nowhere near as bad as it used to be) and you get Woodson over Manning.
At one point ESPN pushed the narrative of his offensive impact so much they were giving the stat "first downs recorded" which was something like 7 or 8 on the season. Woodson was a great player but an absolutely unworthy Heisman candidate. His impact was minimal in comparison to a quarterback. Early on ESPN was pushing the Penn State running back who was a bust that season and maybe even got hurt. Then they switched to Woodson. There was basically no way Woodson could have a bad game. If he didn't have any interceptions they would claim whatever 3 yard and a cloud of dust Big 10 team they were playing that week was afraid to throw it his way. If he had 12 yards receiving they would claim he was having an unprecedented offensive impact. In 12 games Woodson had about 200 yards receiving. The next season Champ Bailey was his equal as a defensive back, and had almost 800 yards receiving, he scored more touchdowns than Woodson, he had more return yards than Woodson, he did everything better than Woodson. He finished something like 7th in the Heisman voting.
In 1996 Danny Wuerffel had 3600 yards, 39 tds and 13 interceptions. Florida was 11-1, Wuerffel had just taken 6 sacks and thrown 3 interceptions vs Florida State in a loss as the Heisman voting took place. He won the Heisman handily after the Gators won the SEC title.
In 1997 Manning threw for 3800+ yards, 36 tds, 11 interceptions, Tennessee was 11-1 and SEC Champions when Heisman voting took place. Woodson won after 10 weeks of unrelenting hype even though Manning had a slightly better season that the prior years winner at the same position.
The Johnny Majors shafting was nearly as egregious. Majors had over 1100 total yards for what actually should have been the national champion over Oklahoma. Oklahoma played 0 tanked teams all season and chose not to even play in a bowl because bowl games had no meaning and the national championship was crowned before they took place. After Majors led Tennessee to a win over #2 ranked Georgia Tech they jumped to #1. The next week Tennessee beat a top 20 Ole Miss team 27-7, while Oklahoma beat a Missouri team that won 4 games that year and Oklahoma jumped back to #1. Voters did everything they could at the time to not vote for teams from the Southeast for anything. Thus Paul Hornung won the Heisman on a team that had lost 7 of it's final 8 games, and finished 80th in the nation in scoring offense.
1951 was actually as bad or worse than the two above. Hank Lauricella was 10-0, SEC and National Champion, had 300 more yards and 3 more touchdowns than Dick Kazmaier who played nobody with a pulse that season at Princeton. He was the last Ivy League player to ever win a Heisman. It had been 14 years since anyone from an Ivy had won it at the time as most people acknowledged that great football was leaving them behind. They only had one team ever again who would finish in the final AP poll after 1951.
So 3 of Tennessee's 4 second place finishes involved something unusual and historic happening in each event. Last Ivy player, only player with a losing record and only defensive player.
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