The easy thing to do is put the halo on Marcus Mariota and the horns on Jameis Winston, paint the Rose Bowl as a showdown between good and evil, and call it a day. Especially since Mariota is our latest and greatest hometown hero.

Of course, nothing is as simple as that unless you favor cartoons, fairy tales and other brands of fiction over reality.

Tom Clancy fashioned stories somewhere between flights of fancy and what really could happen to make the Cold War very hot. That guy Ritter in "Clear and Present Danger" was a slimy weasel, but he was right when he insisted, "Gray! The world is gray, Jack!"

And so it is with Mariota and Winston, the two most recent winners of the Heisman Trophy, set to square off in a national semifinal on New Year’s Day.

Certainly, everything in front of us to this point paints the Oregon quarterback from Honolulu and Saint Louis School as a combination of childlike innocence and manlike maturity, adding up to excellence of character.

You can also use "child" and "character," but in a different way, to describe his Florida State counterpart. Winston has compiled a resume as a character prone to childish and at times questionable behavior. Some of his antics are easy to chalk up to when-we-were-that-age silliness. But definitely not all, regardless of how accommodating jurisprudence and FSU administration have proven to be on one side of the he-said, she-said equation — the side that exonerates Winston from a sexual-assault accusation and lets him play on, of course.

This was a serious allegation, with serious questions regarding a possible cover-up. Most of the other negativity surrounding Winston has been proven, but fits better under the category of not-a-good-look than potentially incarceration-worthy.

I mean, who knows? Maybe Winston was liberating those crab legs to feed the poor of Tallahassee (and not just his impoverished teammates, those starving college kids we hear so much about).

Meanwhile, Mariota’s only brush with the law was for speeding back to campus. The reason? According to Oregon super-booster Phil Knight, Mariota lost track of the time while talking story with kids at a Boys & Girls Club.

And the legend grows.

Men want their sons to be him. Women want him to marry their daughters. David Letterman wants him to deliver the Top Ten.

Mariota doesn’t just help old ladies cross the street, he paints crosswalks for them.

Still, I accomplished the near-impossible — almost as incredible as Mariota throwing just two interceptions all season — and found a local guy who likes Winston and Florida State better.

My high school classmate Joseph Colello was stationed with the Air Force in the panhandle from 1997 to 2002, and was a Seminoles fan even before that.

He said he admires Mariota, but sees Winston as a more polished product, at least on the field.

"(Winston’s) still got a lot of growing up to do as a human being. The thing is he’s learning from his mistakes," Colello said. "As football players, Mariota’s put up some huge numbers, but he’s not as battle-tested. How many times have you seen Mariota in one of those dire situations, needing a touchdown to win? He had a magical season, but I would put Winston above him in the area of handling pressure. Remember, until Florida State gets beaten, they’re still undefeated national champions."

That may be true. And the jury is definitely still out on which will be the better NFL quarterback.

But I can say with confidence that the current holder of the Heisman Trophy is a better example of what the award is supposed to mean as a total person than the 2013 recipient.