As Jonathan Taylor of Wisconsin continues the season this Saturday in which many observers feel he should win the Heisman Trophy which goes to the “best” college football player in the nation, I thought we could take a look back at the namesake of the trophy who died on this date in 1936 and is buried in Rhinelander Wisconsin.
John Heisman was a player and coach for many college football teams in his career including Georgia Tech, Clemson, Auburn, Penn and Rice. He was known as a stern taskmaster saying in his book, “I have no time to say please”. He said coaches need to be severe, arbitrary and little short of a czar”. Reportedly one of his quotes at the beginning of each season was “What is this? It is a prolate spheroid in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football”. Could he have coached today? Doubtful. He definitely changed the game though. He was the innovator who brought us the “flying wedge”, he had his guards pull on running plays, He had his center snap the ball to the backs instead of rolling it to them which had been the custom. At Auburn he started having his quarterback say “hut” or “hike” trying to draw the other team offside. And while Heisman didnt invent the forward pass, he was a main instigator to get it legalized. Think of what football would be without the forward pass. His 1899 Auburn team ran the first (what we would now call) hurry up offense. After Auburn, he turned Clemson into a football powerhouse. In 1901 they beat Guilford 122-0 . At Georgia Tech he never had a losing season running up a 32 game winning streak including the most lopsided win in college football history, a 222-0 win over Cumberland in 1916. It was there he started posting downs and yardage on the scoreboard. In 1905 after 18 players had been killed and 159 players seriously injured (no, really), President Theodore Roosevelt demanded rules be changed to make the game safer. The forward pass was legalized and the games were changed from two halves to four quarters among other changes. He also started what was called the “Heisman Shift”, where players would shift from their starting spots to confuse the defense. It wasn't all positive with Heisman. His Georgia Tech squads were accused of having a fraudulent scholarship fund to attract football players. So as you can see, the more things change….
He was also an actor and would use his oratorical skills to rouse his team in pregame and halftime speeches flowered with references to ancient Greek and Roman heroes.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall Of Fame in 1954. Earlier, just after his death, the Downtown Athletic Club in New York renamed their trophy after Heisman. He has streets named after him on Clemson's campus and at Auburn and has been called the “Father of Southern Football”. So why is he buried in Rhinelander? That was where his wife was from. You can visit his grave in Northern Wisconsin and there is a statue at the Rinelander Airport.
I'm not sure that the Heisman Trophy still goes to the “best”player in college football each year. It seems that it sometimes goes to the player with the best PR campaign and only quarterbacks need apply. Can Taylor win it? Yes. Will he? Probably not.
A new Johnny Cash documentary is coming to YouTube. Titled The Gift:The Journey of Johnny Cash, it will come out November 11th and feature interviews with family members and friends. It will be screened at the 50th annual Nashville Film Festival next Monday.
It was 1955 that kids first tuned into this
Some new movies coming
Covers Of The Day
Quotes Of The Day
“The President used taxpayer funded assistance to pressure the leader of a foreign government to investigate his political opponents to benefit his re-election, and enlisted the State Dept and DoJ in that effort. We know this from documents. Everything else is noise.”-Ben Rhodes
“Trump told US diplomats an elaborate story about CNN building a $2 million studio in North Carolina and then tearing it down out of anti-GOP bias. The studio…never existed. He made up the whole thing.That was one of his 59 false claims last week”-Daniel Dale
“As impeachment push advances, keep in mind modern authoritarian systems don’t withhold the truth. They overwhelm you with info: Some accurate. Some false. Some half accurate, until you believe there is no truth. And that if it exists, it’s unknowable. Then you give up and accept.”-Richard Engel
“Trump out here showing his whole ass before the President of Finland.Like how you got foreign guests in your own backyard seeing you dodge questions about impeachment???At this point, calling us an international joke is beyond the point. “-Ernest Owens #TrumpMeltdown
“We just witnessed the US president having a psychotic episode on live TV:The mental decline of Trump has been nothing short of stunning.At this point, it's absolutely gross negligence for White House staff, as well as Trump's family not to do an intervention.”-Bill Madden #TrumpMeltdown
“If your base is cool with moats filled with snakes and alligators and shooting humans in the legs (and they are. Just watch his next racist pep rally) then maybe we should stop talking about trying to reach his f*cking base. They’re gone. We don’t need them.”-Stephen Pasquale
No free gas today…..
The President of Finland knows what we all know…..
