John William Heisman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Heisman

John William Heisman (October 23, 1869 – October 3, 1936) was a player and coach of American football, baseball, and basketball, as well as a sportswriter and actor. He served as the head football coach at Oberlin College, Buchtel College (now known as the University of Akron), Auburn University, Clemson University, Georgia Tech, the University of Pennsylvania, Washington & Jefferson College, and Rice University, compiling a career college football record of 186–70–18.

Heisman was also the head basketball coach at Georgia Tech, tallying a mark of 9–14, and the head baseball coach at Buchtel, Clemson, and Georgia Tech, amassing a career college baseball record of 199–108–7. He served as the athletic director at Georgia Tech and Rice. While at Georgia Tech, he was also the president of the Atlanta Crackers baseball team.

Sportswriter Fuzzy Woodruff dubbed Heisman the "pioneer of Southern football". He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1954. His entry there notes that Heisman "stands only behind Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, and Walter Camp as a master innovator of the brand of football of his day". He was instrumental in several changes to the game, including legalizing the forward pass. The Heisman Trophy, awarded annually to the season's most outstanding college football player, is named after him.

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http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=Heisman&GSfn=...

Pioneer Coach, Author.

He was an innovator and developer of early football resulting in the finished product we know today. Early great football coaches such as Knute Rockne and George Halas, each had a hand, adding features which has enhanced the sport. John Heisman, especially, excelled at changes and introduction of new ways to make the game more fun and interesting. To his credit...developed one of the first shifts (Heisman shift) where both guards stepped back and led an end run; conceived the center snap, replacing the former procedure where the ball was merely rolled to the quarterback; originated the first hidden-ball play, which was slightly unorthodox as the quarterback hid the ball under his jersey; introduced the "hike" vocal signal for initiating a play; led the fight to reduce the game from halves to quarters and was in the forefront of the move to legalize the forward pass; for good measure he invented the scoreboard listing scores, downs and yardage allowing fans to better follow the game. His coaching career ultimately spanned more than three decades.

He was born John William Heisman in Cleveland, the son of John and Sarah Heisman, his father a German immigrant. The family moved to Titusville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up while his father worked in the booming oil fields. John was an excellent student and athletically active. He enrolled at Brown University then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, playing varsity football, coming away with a law degree. He would never practice law, as upon graduation, took his first coaching job at little Oberlin College in Ohio leading to an unprecedented number of coaching positions until his retirement. He coached at Auburn, Clemson, University of Pennsylvania, Washington and Jefferson, Rice and a most impressive stint at Georgia Tech compiling a 33 straight win record. He left Georgia Tech to return as head coach at his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, another return to Washington & Jefferson and decided to move west finding a position with Texas and Rice Institute, his last, retiring at age 62.

Retirement indeed! He began to write for magazines...American Liberty, Colliers Magazine and became the football editor for the professional publication Sporting Goods Journal which led him to be named the first Athletic Director of the Downtown Athletic Club of New York City. He founded and organized the Touchdown Club of New York, then the National Football Coaches Association. John developed bronchial pneumonia which took his life at his home on 28 E. Seventieth Street in New York at the age of 66. Three days after his death, his body was taken by train to Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Until then, his only connection to the small city was an occasional trip with his wife Edith to visit her sister. Her wish was to be buried here resulting in his interment so they could one day be together. Legacy...During his tenure as director at the Downtown Athletic Club, he organized and set up the process for determining the best collegiate football player in the country. The first award was given in 1935, called the "Downtown Athletic Club Award" with the recipient being Jay Berwanger. Before the second award could be presented in 1936, John was gone. The award was renamed and since that time has been called "Heisman Memorial Trophy." Larry Kelly from Yale, was the first recipient of the newly named trophy. He was the author of the book "Principles of Football," published in 1922 and reprinted in 2000. Since his death the popular reception of the memorial trophy named in his honor has obscured his identity.

His burial place in Rhinelander is barely known even to its residents and not a single winner of the Heisman Trophy has ever visited his grave.

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John Heisman (1869-1936) is among the people credited with making college football an American passion, and the game's most prestigious individual award is named after him. He coached at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (now Auburn University) from 1895 until 1899. As a serious student of the game's rules and strategies, Heisman introduced innovations that increased the popularity of football, particularly in the South, where he coached for 25 years.

A son of German immigrants, John William Heisman was born on October 23, 1869, in Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up in Titusville, Pennsylvania, an oil boom town, where he excelled in both athletics and academics. Heisman, the valedictorian of his graduating class of 1887, was captain of the baseball team, a championship gymnast, and a member of the football team for three years. He continued to play football in college, first at Brown University (1887-89) and then at the University of Pennsylvania (1890-91), where he earned a law degree. Instead of practicing law, Heisman decided on a career coaching football, beginning at Oberlin College in 1892. In 1893, he took a coaching job at Buchtel College (now the University of Akron), but returned to Oberlin College in 1894. Impressed with Heisman's success in Ohio, Auburn hired him to take over its football program in 1895. Auburn's football team had been through four coaches, none of whom had lasted more than a year. George Petrie, Auburn's first coach, was a history professor. By 1894, however, when Auburn became a charter member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA), it wanted an experienced coach.

Heisman's first season at Auburn consisted of only three games, with a loss to Vanderbilt and wins over rivals the University of Alabama (UA) and the University of Georgia. In his second year at Auburn, Heisman posted a 3-1 record with lopsided wins over Mercer, Georgia Tech and Sewanee, and a loss to Georgia. Auburn went 2-0-1 in 1897, 2-1 in 1898, and 3-1-1 in Heisman's final season of 1899.

The Vanderbilt game in 1895 was memorable for the introduction of a hidden-ball play into the game. Trailing Vanderbilt 9-0 in the second-half, Heisman instructed Auburn quarterback Reynolds Tichenor to stuff the ball under his shirt. The wedge of players surrounding him then scattered to all parts of the field, distracting the Vanderbilt players. Tichenor, who pretended to be tying his shoe, got up to run down the field unopposed for a touchdown. The play would later be outlawed.

Other innovations attributed to Heisman include the handoff, the double lateral, and the "flea flicker." He also invented the center-to-quarterback direct snap; up to that time, the center simply rolled the ball on the ground back to the quarterback. To commence play, Heisman began the use of the voice signal, "hike." Although Heisman did not introduce the forward pass, he crusaded to have the play eventually legalized in 1906.

During his time at Auburn, Heisman had to teach elocution and oratory and act in stock productions during the summer in Atlanta to supplement his scant salary of $500. Thus, after the 1899 season, Heisman decided it was time for him to move on. In 1900, he became Clemson's head football coach, a position he held until 1903 with a record of 19-3-2. In 1904, Heisman left Clemson for Georgia Tech, where in 16 seasons his record was 102-29-7, a winning percentage of .779 that is still best in the school's history. Under Heisman's leadership, the Yellow Jackets won a national championship in 1917 and recorded the most lopsided score in college history by defeating Cumberland University (the forerunner of present-day Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham) 222-0 on October 17, 1916.

After his success at Georgia Tech, Heisman finished out his coaching career with stints at the University of Pennsylvania (1920-22), Washington and Jefferson University (1923), and Rice University (1924-1927). His overall career record was 185-70-18. Upon retirement from coaching, Heisman became the director of athletics at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City. In 1935, the first Downtown Athletic Club award for best college football player in the country was given to Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago. John Heisman died the next year at the age of 67, and the award was renamed in his honor. The Heisman Trophy was awarded to Auburn's Pat Sullivan in 1971, Vincent "Bo" Jackson in 1985, and Cameron Newton in 2010, still the only athletes to win the award from a university at which Heisman coached. In December 2009, Mark Ingram became the first player from the University of Alabama to win the coveted award, and UA's Derrick Henry won in 2015.