A Brief History
On October 3, 1936, the Director of the Downtown Athletic Club, John Heisman, died at the age of 66, spurring his fellow board members to rename their annual award to the best college football player East of the Mississippi the “Heisman Trophy.” Did you ever wonder why the premier college football award is named after Heisman? Rest assured, it is with good reason!
Digging Deeper
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1869, of Bavarian (German) immigrants, John was raised in Titusville, Pennsylvania where he became the high school Salutatorian and played on the football team, much to his father’s chagrin. He went on to continue playing football in college, first at Brown University and then at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated from Law School. Playing center at only 158 pounds, Heisman was always undersized.
Heisman began his college football coaching career at Oberlin College (Ohio), and went on to coach at Buchtel, Oberlin (again), Auburn, Clemson, Georgia Tech (where he won the 1917 National Championship), Penn, Washington and Jefferson, and Rice, compiling a career record of 186 wins, 70 losses, and 18 ties. As impressive as his college football coaching resume is, Heisman was much more than just an innovative and successful college football coach. He also coached basketball at Georgia Tech (posting a 9-14 record) and 19 seasons of college baseball at Georgia Tech, Buchtel and Clemson, compiling a career record of 219 wins, 119 losses and 7 ties. (Pretty darn good baseball record!)
If coaching at the highest level in college sports was not demanding enough, Heisman also served as Athletic Director at Georgia Tech for 15 years and at Rice for 3 years. On top of the National Championship in football, Heisman had also won several Southern football championships.
Heisman became the Director of the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City in 1935, the same year the Club began awarding the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy to the best college football player in the Eastern United States. When Heisman died of pneumonia on October 3, 1936 in New York City, the DAC changed the name of their trophy to honor Heisman, and began including players from across the country in consideration for the Heisman Trophy. In 1954, Heisman was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Heisman’s football innovations include pulling guards, shifts, the “normal” way of hiking the ball (including the out loud count by the quarterback), changing the game from halves to quarters, and in 1906 he was a main proponent of getting the forward pass legalized.
John Heisman was an intelligent, tough, personable and honest man, a name quite worthy of gracing the highest individual award in college football. If only all the recipients of the award could live up to his standards! (Some do, some don’t- OJ Simpson, Johnny Manziel!)
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Heisman, John M. and Mark Schlabach. Heisman: The Man Behind the Trophy. Howard Books, 2015.
The featured image in this article, a photograph of John Heisman posing as football player while at Penn, 1891, is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1924.
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