John Heisman
John William Heisman (
October 23,
1869 –
October 3,
1936) was a prominent
American football player and
college football coach in the early era of the sport and is the namesake of the
Heisman Trophy awarded annually to the season's best college football player.
He was born in
Cleveland, Ohio, but grew up in
Titusville, Pennsylvania, where he played football for Titusville High School, graduating in 1887. He went on to play football at
Brown University 1887-1889 and at the
University of Pennsylvania 1890-1891. He coached at
Oberlin College in
1893, went to the
University of Akron in
1894, and returned to Oberlin the next year. In
1895, he went to
Auburn University, where he stayed for five years. With all these schools combined, he lost only five games.
In
1900, he went to
Clemson University, where he coached for four seasons before moving to
Georgia Tech. He put together a spectacular 16 seasons there, including three undefeated seasons and a 32-game undefeated streak. He was coaching the Georgia Tech Engineers when they
defeated the Cumberland University Bulldogs 222-0 in a game played in
Atlanta in 1916, in the most one-sided college football game ever played, during which the Engineers scored with every possession of the ball. Heisman's
running up the score against a totally outmanned opponent (supposedly motivated by revenge against Cumberland's
baseball team running up the score against Tech 22-0 the previous year).
He went back to Pennsylvania for one season in
1920, then to
Washington and Jefferson College, before ending his career with four seasons at
Rice University.
He was an innovator and developed one of the first shifts, had both guards pull to lead an end run, and had his center toss the ball back, instead of rolling or kicking it. He was a proponent of the legalization of the forward pass.
Heisman subsequently became the athletics director of the former
Downtown Athletic Club in
Manhattan,
New York, and in
1935 the club began awarding annually in his honor what is now almost universally referred to as the Heisman Trophy, given to the player voted as the season's best collegiate player. Voters for this award consist primarily of media representatives, who are allocated by regions across the country in order to filter out possible regional bias, and former recipients. Following the
bankruptcy of the Downtown Athletic Club in
2002, the award is now given out by the
Yale Club.
*
Georgia Sports Hall of Fame
