by Sam Hatcher
He compiled a remarkable record by today’s standards of 186 wins, 70 losses, and 18 ties. Only at Rice was he unable to accrue a winning record. He won a national championship at Georgia Tech in 1917 after posting a perfect 9–0 season.
The cagey coach proved to have one of the most innovative minds in the game, and sportswriters looked upon him as a scientist because of the plays and stunts he brought to the sport.
He introduced a scheme where two pulling guards led blockers on an end run; created what is known as the “Heisman Shift,” a precursor to the “T” formation; originated the center snap; and was first to instruct his quarterbacks to shout “hike!” or “hep1” to signal the center to snap the ball and begin the play.
Heisman came up with the hidden ball trick, quickly banned, where a running back would tuck the pigskin beneath under his jersey; double passes or laterals in the backfield; reverse pitches on running plays; and signaling plays to the team on the field from the sideline.
His inspirations often led to the need for rule changes and new rules.
He once had the image of a football painted on the front of his team’s jerseys, a ploy to confuse the defense as to which running back was being handed the ball in the offensive backfield.
Violence in the game
Football had become so violent in the early 1900s that many called for the sport to be abolished. Even President Theodore Roosevelt showed concern over the injuries and asked that those involved in the sport find ways to reduce the physical dangers. Several players had been killed in 1905 on the playing field, three in one day, and that led to even stronger pleas that something be done to stop the violence.
Heisman took the lead along with Yale athletic director Walter Camp, whose rules of the game were endorsed and followed nationally. He asked Camp to consider legalizing the forward pass, believing that would reduce much of the roughness on the line of scrimmage, loosen up the game overall and make it safer for players.
The forward pass, Heisman’s brainchild, was legalized in 1906.
In his efforts to revamp the sport and make it less dangerous, Heisman also is recognized as being responsible for having games divided into quarters. Originally, the game had but a half-time division.
For his wizardry, on and off the field, he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
On the side Heisman proved a credible college baseball coach, amassing a record of 219–119–7 at three schools: Buchtel, Clemson and Georgia Tech.
THE FORWARD PASS
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It’s believed that John Heisman observed the forward pass demonstrated for the first time while he was scouting a game between the universities of Georgia and North Carolina in 1895.
When a punter in the game fumbled the snap from center, he managed to grasp the pigskin just enough to heave it forward across the line of scrimmage to a teammate who caught the ball and sped for a touchdown.
Despite the desperation of the wobbly fling, Heisman recognized this was a play that could dramatically change the game.
Heisman may not have invented the forward pass, but he was its chief cheerleader and saw that it became a legal offensive option. He also believed that it would prevent costly injuries on the line of scrimmage.
Between 1904 and 1905 forty-four players were reported killed while playing football, and hundreds of others suffered serious injuries. The viciousness of the sport had gotten out of hand. Heisman wrote that the bruising, running game was “killing the game as well as the players.”
Arguing for the rule change, he said the forward pass “would scatter the mob,” meaning that the monstrous turmoil surrounding running plays could be greatly relieved.
He lobbied Walter Camp at Yale, the man regarded as the keeper of the rules for college football during that era, to make the forward pass legal. Camp did not react initially, thus Heisman promoted his campaign nationwide, stirring support from coaches and sportswriters.
Camp acquiesced in 1906. The forward pass became legal, and the game of football was changed forever in a good way.
The thespian
There were occasions when Heisman taught the game of football to his players as if he was producing a Broadway play.
The coach was passionate over the works of Shakespeare and often spent summers performing in plays. He was enthralled with acting and singing.
He had a habit of using polysyllabic language when speaking about or coaching football, a trait he had mastered from his love of Shakespeare and his Ivy League education in law at the University of Pennsylvania.
Practicing his Shakespearean speech he would regularly welcome a new flock of athletes by holding a football in front of his audience and asking, “Do you know what this is?””
Then, providing an answer to his own question he would explain, “It is a prolate spheroid in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing.”
Then he would pause, gaze eye to eye with the players before him and offer, “Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.”
Following his theatrical bent in 1897, Heisman produced, directed and was an actor in a play to benefit the Auburn athletic department which was floundering in debt because of its football program.
The coach, who had been an actor in New York before coming to Auburn, succeeded in raising nearly $700, which served to persuade school administrators to field a football team the next year.
Not much time
George Allen stretched out on the couch in the Kappa Sig frat house with a load on his mind.
He had pledged himself as the principle collateral on a performance contract that, if not fulfilled, could bring down his alma mater.
“What in the hell am I going to do?” George muttered to himself.
It was late on a Friday afternoon and the fraternity house was already beginning to buzz. Frat brothers, their sweethearts, and friends were scattered inside the house, out on the porch, and sitting beneath huge shade trees on this humid, warm September day.
Several of his comrades, enjoying a cold brew disguised in an outdated dark canning jar, noticed George was not wearing the easy countenance or beaming smile that typically dominated his face.
Gingerly, some of his house brothers approached him, thinking maybe he was having problems with his studies or that he had gotten into a confrontation with a professor.
“Hey, George. How’s it going?” asked his pal Gentry, a friend of George whose name he subconsciously filed at the top of the list of students he planned to coerce into playing in the game against Tech.
Calculating his response, as he didn’t want to tip his hand at this early stage, George said simply, “We need to talk later.”
While he went upstairs to change clothes, the conversation among the young folks below turned to speculation on their friend’s hushed behavior.
HEISMAN QUOTES
* * *
“To break training without permission is an act of treason.”
“Don’t cuss. Don’t argue with the officials. And don’t lose the game.”
“Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.”
“When you find your opponent’s weak spot, hammer it.”
“When in doubt, punt!”
A few minutes later George came down, grabbed a bottle of beer from the ice box and rejoined the crowd. After downing the drink he asked the congenial congregation to step outside. Holding forth on the front porch, he addressed the group of about 50 mostly male students.
“This has been an interesting day,” he began, choosing his words carefully. “I am facing a challenge of gigantic proportion. By Monday it’s going to involve all of us in one degree or another. I need some time to meditate on the matter and to devise a plan, but when I reach a resolution, I am going to need the support of each one of you as well as others. Please be on alert.
“I can say that in the years ahead you will have the ex
quisite honor of telling your children and grandchildren that when you were a student at Cumberland University you raised your hand and volunteered for a noble deed. You saved the school you loved.”
Then George retreated inside for a few minutes and moments later hopped into his Chevy and drove away. He needed a solitary place to conspire. He had to find a way to get Cumberland back on the football field, if only for one last game.
A trip to Nashville
George drove his automobile around Lebanon for a couple of hours. As sundown approached, he knew the last place he needed to be was with his cohorts at the Kappa Sig house.
He struggled to come up with a site that would offer a retreat where he could concentrate.
On a whim he turned west on to the Nashville Highway. Soon he passed the turn off to Horn Springs. That was another spot he needed to avoid. He motored on, past the sleepy village of Mt. Juliet, past Hermitage and Donelson and nearly two hours later, he cruised into the capitol city of Nashville.
Heading downtown, he made a few turns and found himself on Sixth Avenue. Looking to his left, he spied the logical solution to his dilemma: the Hermitage Hotel.
Opened in 1910, the hotel would make a haven and headquarters for George to layout his master plan.
Hermitage Hotel
HERMITAGE HOTEL
* * *
Requiring two full years for construction, the hotel, listed in the National Register of Historical Places, represents a Beaux-Arts style of architecture. Situated only two blocks from the Tennessee Capitol, the Hermitage Hotel has been the hotel of choice for a number of U.S. presidents when visiting Nashville including Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. The hotel took its name from the plantation home of President Andrew Jackson and has been the meeting place for legislators, decision makers, and the state’s powerful elite since its early days.
The rack rate for a one-night stay was three dollars. He booked himself in at the front desk for two nights.
Beer was out of the question, but there was no reason to keep George from ordering a pint of Jack Daniels from one of the hotel’s bell hops, gents who doubled as metropolitan bootleggers.
He inquired about the price of a pint of Jack’s “Old No. 7.”
Advised he could get his order delivered to the room for two bucks, a steep tab when you considered a gallon of Jack Daniels only cost $3.50 legally. But nonetheless George placed an order.
Ninety minutes later he heard a knock on his hotel room door. Outside a young African-American cradled a brown paper sack crunched around his libation of choice.
George paid the man and turned his attention to serious drinking and thinking.
One sip at a time
George chatted aloud with his mute friend Jack, who slouched in the six-ounce glass by the student manager’s side.
After taking his first swallow, the master planner reached into the center desk drawer of the Louis IVX-styled library table, a standard guest room fixture at the Hermitage, and pulled out four sheets of the hotel’s smartly-embossed stationery.
He began scribbling, then doodling before he wrote down five words in capital letters: TEAM, EQUIPMENT, TRANSPORTATION, EXPENSES, LOGISTICS.
These terms would dictate the outline of his master plan and keep his mind on track while he dallied with his old friend Jack into the early hours of Saturday morning. He would take a sip, write a few words and then repeat the process.
After racking his brain for most of the night and consuming his pint of whiskey, George wasn’t any closer to a solution than when he was driving around the Lebanon square the evening before.
By now the first rays of sunshine were sneaking through the window blinds.
George thought it best to lay down his pen, step outside for some fresh air, have a hearty breakfast, embellished with a pot of coffee to get the adrenalin going.
After dining he retreated to his room and did not invite pal Jack to what he conceived would be a well disciplined planning session.
First up, he tackled the major problem of how Cumberland could construct a football team out of thin air.
He briefly wondered if he might repeat the stunt he pulled last spring and nab a band of ringers in Nashville. There could be some strapping former high school athletes, who might sign on for an intriguing and competitive adventure in Atlanta and the opportunity to step into their cleats for one more game.
And George also could put some feelers out to Vanderbilt University to see if any of its players had an itching to tackle some brainy boys at Tech.
He was confident he could make an attractive pitch if he could locate the prospects.
Staying close to home
As the morning slipped into early afternoon, George agonized over his dilemma. Eventually he came to the conclusion that the bulk of the players should be Cumberland men.
He could start with Gentry and a couple of other fraternity brothers whom he could trust to not let the secret slip until he’d finished his master plan.
He then sat down to map out the details.
By Sunday morning he had several pages filled with notes. George had created an organizational chart and spent the rest of the day filling in the blanks, including the names of potential players.
He also had a list of tasks. He would assign some of his non-athletic buddies to handle many of these jobs.
As for football equipment, he figured he could scrape up the jerseys from last year’s team and filch some pads and helmets from Castle Heights Military Academy, the military prep school a half mile away from Cumberland. He would gather a half-dozen footballs from frat houses and students.
To get his squad to Atlanta the only practical means of transport would be passenger train. There were three rail routes between Nashville and Atlanta frequently traveled. One took passengers east to Knoxville and from Knoxville south to Atlanta. The second route went from Nashville to Birmingham and from Birmingham east to Atlanta. And the third was directed from Nashville to Chattanooga and then one-hundred miles south to Atlanta.
The smart thing to do, George thought, would be to board the train in Lebanon, loading the equipment in the same car with the players and accompanying students. That guaranteed that all would arrive together.
He would decide on which route once he got the price of the tickets and schedule. There also would be the expense of staying two nights in an Atlanta hotel and meals.
With his ragamuffin scheme seemingly coming together, the bushed schemer hit the hay late Saturday night.
Back to school
George checked out of the Hermitage Hotel shortly before noon Sunday and cruised back to Lebanon, pulling up to the frat house around two o’clock.
There he was greeted by Gentry and his band of brothers. They had been fretting about his mental state ever since he disappeared on Friday.
They quickly recognized that George was back to his same old self as he was laughing and asking about the weekend’s social affairs.
After things calmed down, George tapped Gentry on the shoulder and pulled him aside for a private chat.
He revealed the mystery to Gentry, going through the whole story beginning with him being the one who screwed things up by forgetting to tell Georgia Tech that Cumberland would not be fielding a team.
George explained how he and the president had convinced the board of trust a few days earlier that they would get a team together and make good on the contract with Tech. He told Gentry that they gave their word that the Cumberland Bulldogs would be on Georgia Tech’s field in Atlanta in three weeks, would fulfill their obligation to Tech, and that their efforts would serve to remove the Lebanon school from the cloud of financial disruption being threatened.
GENTRY DUGAT: The Cumberland alum is remembered as a colorful Texas historian, orator, and journalist. Born on a ranch outside of Beeville, Texas, Dugat earned a degree in law from Cumberland University, worked on seven Texas newspapers, edited the Cotton Ginners Journal, a
nd wrote a biography of post Civil War editor and orator Henry W. Grady. In 1958 the World War I veteran organized the Bee County, Texas Historical Commission.
He only asked that Gentry keep it a secret until Monday afternoon when he planned to call together the student body for a rally on the front lawn of Memorial Hall.
With Gentry’s help, George began spreading word about the rendezvous. Handbills written in bright red on notebook paper were posted around the campus. Messengers were sent to every dorm room to invite resident students.
By noon Monday word had seeped throughout Lebanon that George Allen would be making a big announcement at three o’clock on the Cumberland campus.
Everyone in town recognized George’s name, as he was the guy who had promoted the big baseball game the spring before against Georgia Tech when the Bulldogs topped Heisman’s ranked team 22–0.
What on God’s green earth could George be up to this time?
A crowd gathers
An hour before George was to make his announcement, the front lawn of the Cumberland University campus had already taken the appearance of an old-time religious tent meeting. While most were standing, some women had spread blankets beneath shade trees, and some had brought heavy, wooden folding chairs. The hundred or so congregated were college students for the most part with a dozen or more being townsfolk.
One hour later, the gathering had swollen considerably, closing in on a thousand curious souls.
By this time, the attendees included a few members of the board of trust, faculty members, law school professors and a good showing from citizens of Lebanon.
Watching from the president’s window in Memorial Hall, the same window from which Gen. Patton would years later look over troops of the Second Army, George tried to focus on his speech but the blossoming crowd distracted him.