Who is heisman named for

His innovations changed football. He proposed legalizing the forward pass; used guards to lead interference on sweeps; and introduced the direct snap from center. In his teams began using audible signals to begin each offensive play. He also introduced a special shift that was the forerunner of the T and I formations. Heisman coached for 27 seasons, finishing his career with a record and only one losing season, according to the College Football Hall of Fame website.

In , he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Swick says part of the reason the Heisman Trophy, awarded by the Downtown Athletic Club of New York, was given its name in was because Heisman was so well known.

The Cleveland house where John Heisman was born on October 23, By the time Heisman was 7, his family had moved to Titusville, a small town in an oil-rich area of northwestern Pennsylvania. As a football coach years later, he weaved literature and elaborate terms into his speeches to players. Better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football. At age 17, Heisman went to Brown University, where he formed a club football team.

After two years, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania with the hope of pursuing a law degree. As a 5-foot-7, pound lineman, he played three years at Penn.

An accident—reportedly an antiquated battery light flashed in his face—nearly cost him his vision. So, rather than practice law, he returned to Ohio the family had moved back in and took the coaching job at Oberlin College in There Heisman introduced the first hidden-ball play, a bit of trickery that often baffled opponents.

Quite a bit. A number of Heisman winners have eventually sold their hardware, and the trophies fetch quite a bit of loot. SEC fans are going to be floored by this one, but the Ol' Ball Coach did something really classy when he won the Heisman in Instead of taking the trophy for himself, Spurrier gave it to the University of Florida so the school could display it and let the student body enjoy it. Florida's student government thought Spurrier's generosity was so classy that they paid for a replica for Spurrier so he'd get to have his own trophy, too.

Since then both the school and the player have received copies of the trophy. Well, not really. Heisman was on the victorious side of possibly the most gratuitously run-up score in sports history. In tiny Cumberland College canceled its football program and disbanded its squad, but it had previously signed a contract to travel to Atlanta to play Heisman's Georgia Tech team. Tech went up in the first quarter, but Heisman kept attacking until the final score was There are tons of hilarious stats from the game, but the funniest is Georgia Tech rushing for yards while Cumberland only squeaked out negative yards on 27 carries.

BY Ethan Trex. Who Exactly Was John Heisman?