Who Is John Heisman

Prior to serving as director of the Downtown Athletic Club, John Heisman had been a legendary college football player for Brown University and University of Pennsylvania, then a college football coach for thirty-six years, from 1892-1927, for Auburn University, Clemson University, Georgia Tech University, Washington & Jefferson College, and Rice University.
As a student at Brown University and University of Pennsylvania, Heisman had played football in its earliest versions - a variation of rugby and what is considered as football today - as a guard, center, tackle, and end. As a coach, he would later play a major role in innovating and advancing the game of football and its rules, but his own time as a player was cut short after nearly being struck by lightning, which damaged his eyesight. In 1982,
he graduated from University of Pennsylvania, earning his law degree after passing his final exams orally. Straight out of college, he began his coaching career at Oberlin College, whose football team was only a year old when he came aboard. Under his leadership that year, the team won all seven of its games, laying the groundwork for Heisman's legendary reputation as a coach. Among his most phenomenal of achievements, during his reign as football coach for Georgia Tech from 1904-1919, he coached the team through an impressive thirty-three wins in a row. During his time there as coach, in 1906, he became responsible for the legalization of the forward pass - an endeavor he had committed to petitioning the rules committee during the preceding three years. In fact, Heisman was responsible for much of the wording throughout the official rulebook regulating college football during his coaching career.
In 1919, he returned to the University of Pennsylvania as head coach, then moved on to coach at Washington and Jefferson in 1922, and Rice University after that. In 1927, Heisman retired from coaching at age 62, and began writing magazine articles that were printed in such publications as American Liberty and Colliers Magazine, working as football editor for Sporting Goods Journal, then being selected to serve as New York's Downtown Athletic Club's first Athletic Director. During his time as the Club's director, he founded both the Touchdown Club of New York and the National Football Coaches Association. During his tenure as director, he also developed the structure and voting system for the honor now distributed each year in his honor, to the nation's best collegiate football player - although he had not initially agreed with the idea of awarding recognition to a single player rather than an entire team. Before dying of pneumonia in 1936, he saw the first of the awards, then called the DAC Trophy, presented to honor University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger in 1935. After his passing, however, Downtown Athletic Club renamed the trophy in his memory: the Heisman Memorial Trophy. So far in the trophy's history, of all the schools where John Heisman served as coach, only Auburn University has had players receive the Heisman Trophy: Pat Sullivan in 1971 and Bo Jackson, in 1985.