Heisman’s First Trophy

by Sam Hatcher

  Heisman recognized a win could be the single most important factor to get schools located outside the Northeast the credit they deserved.

  Heisman’s Golden Tornado pounced on Penn, scoring 41 points while holding the Quakers scoreless.

  The New York Times pitched its story about the Atlanta massacre with the headline “Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Rip Pennsy To Ribbons.”

  The Times reported “Strupper, Guyon and Hill smashed through the line at will, the first named reeling off a 70-yard run in the first three minutes of play for the first touchdown of the game. These three backs carried the brunt of the Yellow Jacket attack and they performed their Duties nobly.”

  “There was little doubt as to who would win the game after the first few minutes of play,” said The Times, “and it was then only a question of the size of the score.”

  The Florida Times-Union, speaking for the South, praised Tech for its win and Heisman’s coaching, adding that teams in the North in the future will have to “reckon with some of those of Dixieland.”

  The Times-Union described the results of the game as a “pleasant surprise.”

  Giving credit to the Yellow Jackets, the Jacksonville newspaper wrote that the unanticipated win by such a large margin over a football power from the North “was certainly furnished by the gridiron gladiators of Georgia Tech last Saturday when they defeated the eleven of the University of Pennsylvania by the decisive score of 41–0. Even the alumni of the Atlanta institution were amazed at the lopsided score. The result not only proves that Coach Heisman, despite his many handicaps, has built up a wonderful machine, but demonstrates that the large Eastern colleges will have to reckon with some of those of Dixieland in the future.”

  It was a new day for football in the South. John Heisman had proven to the world that football in the South was equal to or better than anywhere else in the country. The praise began to rain upon the crafty coach.

  “I was present last Saturday and witnessed the North go down to your wonderful team. It verifies what I have long believed— that the South can produce as fine athletic men and as fine team work as the North in spite of the fact that we have not as much cool weather in which to drill our football material,” wrote President W.L. Pickard of Mercer in a congratulatory letter to Heisman following the game.

  Vanderbilt’s Dan McGugin offered, “I take my pen in hand to congratulate Georgia Tech. You have certainly given an air of respectability to Southern football.”

  Accolades continued to pour in for the Yellow Jackets and their leader.

  The defeat of Penn was a huge step for Tech on its road to a national championship but one giant leap for football in the South.

  Never again would Southern football be a step-sister to the North or Northeast. Thanks to John Heisman and his Golden Tornado, football in the South had found its place on the national stage.

  The season was not finished. Six games remained on the Tech schedule, and several posed major threats to upend and wreck Heisman’s championship quest.

  Next for Tech

  Tech’s dismantling of Pennsylvania made the Yellow Jackets the lead sports story in every major daily newspaper in America.

  In their coverage of Heisman’s team, many of the sports writers referred to the previous year when Tech had scored 222 points against Cumberland, although they didn’t share nitty-gritty details of Heisman holding Cumberland’s feet to the fire over the matter of money.

  The nation’s press hinted that it saw the rise of Tech coming almost exactly one year ago. Some had the opinion that the lopsided match was the key opening the nation’s eyes to the strength of football in the South.

  KIND WORDS FROM AN OLD FRIEND

  * * *

  “Coach J.W. Heisman, of Georgia Tech, left Pennsylvania seventeen years ago.

  “After an interval of seventeen years, he leads a lusty young arrival against his old university and finishes out in front, 41–0.

  “Heisman stands as the prophet of the open game. The forward pass came in around 1906. Heisman was advocating this addition to the offence before 1900.

  “Years before 1906 he had used lateral and other passes in profusion. The Tech coach has always been a great believer in the open game as against mass play. He has developed a greater variety of open field work than any football instructor in the realm, north, east, south or west. Many of these formations have failed to hold up against a charging defense. But many have proved bewildering and baffling.

  “Winning Football elevens are nothing new in Heisman’s life. He had great machines at Auburn back around 1898 and 1899; the same at Clemson, around 1901 and 1902, before Georgia Tech secured his services over twelve years ago,” wrote Grantland Rice in The New York Tribune following the Penn game.

  The game following Penn would be against a mediocre Davidson team, but Heisman was thinking a team with mediocre capacity still might get lucky and knock them from their perch. He also worried that the hype in the press might affect his players in such a way as to make them overconfident and complacent about Saturday’s match-up.

  Davidson arrived in Atlanta with two losses.

  Overcoming his concerns, Tech performed up to expectation with a convincing 32–10 win over the Wildcats. The coach was pleased but not overly so. His offense had played well but the defense had given up its first points of the season.

  The game, like the Penn affair the week before, had attracted a covey of sports writers. They had returned to Atlanta for a different reason on this occasion. The previous week they had come to see what they figured was going to be a blowout of a team from the North over a team from the South. This week they had traveled to Atlanta to pinch themselves and to make sure what they had seen the week before was for real. They were satisfied.

  Two powers in view

  Preparing for games five and six, Heisman saw two teams with respectable football histories. Both Washington and Lee and Vanderbilt had fielded competitive teams in recent years, some of championship quality.

  In the past ten years Georgia Tech had played Vanderbilt twice and Washington and Lee once. Heisman’s recollection of all three games was very clear. He had not won a one of them.

  In 1907 Vanderbilt crushed Tech 54–0 and three years later beat the Yellow Jackets 23–0. Both games were played in Atlanta.

  Heisman remembered that his Engineers would have had a perfect season last year if it had not been for a 7–7 tie in the middle part of the Tech schedule with Washington and Lee. The Generals had been a formidable opponent the year before, and Heisman expected them to be up to the challenge again.

  Since 1910, the Washington and Lee Generals had gone 45–10–5. They had managed consecutive winning seasons for nine straight years and were on track to repeat again in 1917. In 1914 Washington and Lee registered a perfect 9–0 season.

  Vanderbilt’s record since 1910 was 52–14–2. The Commodores had lodged only one losing season during the stretch, a 2–6 measure in 1914. In 1910 Vanderbilt had no losses and a tie for an 8–0–1 run, and in four other years during the period they managed to finish their seasons with only one loss. The Commodores had won three games and had lost one going into the 1917 game against Tech.

  Tech tears into Washington and Lee

  Tech rolled over Washington and Lee 63–0, and the next week slammed Vanderbilt 83–0, one of the Commodores worst defeats ever.

  The Engineers now had played six games, scored 145 points, and allowed only 10 points.

  Life is grand

  With three games left the Yellow Jackets had become the talk of the nation. Each of their Saturday afternoon contests were being covered in detail by sports writers with the largest circulations in America.

  There was jubilation in the South. Georgia Tech’s campus buzzed with excitement. Atlanta was glowing, and the nation had a new team for whom to root in the heart of Dixie.

  Clean sweep

  Heisman keeping his team in gear swept the final three games with flash and fury.
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  With a take-no-prisoner mindset Georgia Tech beat Tulane in New Orleans 48–0 on November 10. Then returned home to devastate Carlisle 98–0, and closed the season by shutting down Auburn 68–7.

  National champions

  For the season Tech scored 491 points and allowed 17. Only Davidson and Auburn scored against the Golden Tornado. They averaged beating their opponents 55–2, playing eight games at home on Grant Field and one away in New Orleans against Tulane.

  Shortly after the final whistle had blown reports of the Tech win over Auburn were racing across the country.

  Four New York newspapers had a long tradition of anointing national champions from the North with little regard for schools in the South. Reluctantly, each named Georgia Tech as the finest team in the land.

  The New York Times deliberated over the matter for weeks after Tech’s final game before giving in and joining the others to declare the Yellow Jackets the best college football had to offer.

  Georgia Tech even received an endorsement for the championship from one of its most fierce rivals, the University of Georgia.

  The Red & Black, Georgia’s campus newspaper, offered congratulations to the Yellow Jackets saying “Our hats go off to the ‘Golden Tornado,’ the wonderful eleven from Georgia Tech.”

  Tech’s 1917 championship team

  NEWSPAPER REPORTS

  * * *

  It was a given that newspapers in the South, in cities like Birmingham, Nashville, Savannah, and Atlanta, would endorse Georgia Tech as college football’s best in 1917, but somewhat surprising were the positive reviews that came from several newspapers in the North particularly in New York.

  The New York Sun wrote “Georgia Tech looms up as one of the truly great teams of all time. Football, once an Eastern specialty, now is a national sport, and in recognition of that we are glad to acclaim Georgia Tech the greatest eleven in the country.”

  The New York Evening Mail penned “Georgia Tech stands revealed as the most sensational football eleven of the year. There is no question about it. The University of Pittsburgh, Ohio State, and Minnesota have great football teams this year. But the record of the Golden Tornado of Atlanta is a bit beyond that of all of them.”

  The New York Globe announced “The one spike needed to clinch Georgia Tech’s claim to the war-time Football championship of the universe was driven home on Thursday when the Yellow Jackets smothered Auburn under a 68–7 reckoning.”

  The New York Times called Tech a “football machine proclaimed by competent observers as the greatest Team which has ever been developed in the South and which was unquestionably the leading eleven of the last season.”

  The congratulations from Georgia did not come easy for two reasons; first, because of the bitter rivalry between the two schools, and secondly, because Georgia had not fielded a football team in 1917 due to the war in Europe. In 1917 and 1918 Georgia omitted football because of the war, while Tech’s football program continued.

  Wrap-up of 1917 season

  Eighty-eight colleges and universities competed on the gridiron nationwide in 1917. It was a season that saw several schools suspend football in patriotic reverence to blood being shed by American soldiers on battlefields in Europe.

  For John Heisman and his Golden Tornado the season was absolutely perfect, no losses, no ties, and a collection of thrilling wins.

  For football in the South it was a renaissance of sorts.

  Chants of a Civil War fought 50 years earlier and remembrances of General Sherman’s torching of Atlanta had long passed. Cotton may no longer have been king, but for the first time ever there reigned a national collegiate football champion from the South.

  Other college programs that fared well in 1917 and ended the season with a high ranking included Pittsburgh, 10–0; Ohio State, 8–0–1; Michigan, 8–2; and Georgetown, 8–1.

  Pittsburgh would likely have been chosen the 1917 national champion if Georgia Tech had not beaten Pennsylvania so badly. That 41–0 romp was far more demonstrative of its superiority and position atop the heap of college football’s best compared to Pitt’s narrow 14–6 margin over the same Penn team.

  Although the “dopesters,” as one New York newspaper tagged the sports writers with the self-appointed duty to name a national champion, would have preferred to name Pittsburgh, they found they couldn’t justify such a declaration.

  Tech’s championship team

  Heisman’s best squad since coming to Tech in 1904 was comprised of 21 players, a relatively small platoon. Fifteen of the athletes were from Georgia, and ten of the starters hailed from Georgia high schools.

  Everett Strupper, Walker Carpenter, and Joe Guyon were named All-Americans, the first players to receive such honors from the Deep South. Strupper was a consensus pick.

  Heisman ran what was recognized at the time as a “jump shift” offense in which three running backs (two halfbacks and a fullback) would line-up in an “I” formation stacked one behind the other. The three backs would shift to one side, the ball would be snapped, and they would explode forward into the defense providing a penetrating blocking force.

  The national championship was celebrated by the Yellow Jackets at a special dinner held at Atlanta’s Druid Hills Country Club on December 8. Each player received a commemorative gold football inscribed with the words “National Champions.”

  In later years Heisman claimed the 1917 team as the best he ever coached.

  “It’s the best team I have seen in my long career as a coach. I was lucky in having under me a team whose members possessed much natural ability and who played the game intelligently. I have never seen a team that, as a whole, was so fast in the composite,” he said in describing his Golden Tornado fleet.

  Members of that hallowed team, their hometowns and the position they played were: Si Bell, Orchard Hill, Georgia, end; Walker Carpenter, Newnan, Georgia, tackle; Alton Colcord, Atlanta, Georgia, end; Ham Dowling, Savannah, Georgia, guard; Bill Fincher, Spring Place, Georgia, tackle, end, guard, and center; Shorty Guill, Sparta, Georgia, end and fullback; Joe “O-Gee-Chidah” Guyon, White Earth, Minnesota, halfback; Judy Harlan, Ottumwa, Iowa, fullback; William Higgins, Roswell, New Mexico, tackle and guard; Albert Hill, Washington, Georgia, quarterback; Charles Johnson, Atlanta, Georgia, end; Clarke Mathes, Jonesboro, Georgia, guard; Pup Phillips, Carnesville, Georgia, center; J.R. Rogers, Memphis, Tennessee, tackle and guard; Theodore Shaver, Dayton, Georgia, halfback; Everett Strupper, Columbus, Georgia, halfback; William Thweatt, Pope, Mississippi, tackle and guard; Ray Ulrich, Chicago, Illinois, end; Dan Whelchel, Ashburn, Georgia, tackle and guard; William Simpson, Atlanta, Georgia, running back; and Wally Smith, Atlanta, Georgia, running back.

  The next year, 1918

  Although the 1918 Georgia Tech team came nowhere near to resembling the 1917 national championship squad, the Golden Tornado remained in the news, still attracting headlines on sports pages across America.

  Many on Tech’s championship team left school at the end of the season to represent America on battlefronts in Europe during World War I.

  That meant it was going to be a challenging season for the man behind the clipboard regarded as one of the best minds to have coached the game.

  Sportswriters, especially from the North, were watching Heisman and his Engineers closely. Columns appeared in newspapers nationwide pondering if Tech could repeat in 1918.

  Tech reeled off five straight wins scoring more than 100 points in three of the games while its defense did not relinquish a single point. Playing the first five games at home Heisman’s team beat Clemson, 28–0; Furman, 118–0; the 11th Cavalry, 123–0; Camp Gordon, 28–0; and North Carolina State, 128–0.

  Game six required Heisman and his Yellow Jackets to travel north and play a nationally ranked Pittsburgh team coached by the legendary Pop Warner.

  Both teams were undefeated when they met on November 23, although Pitt, playing a somewhat abbreviated schedule, had only two games under its belt after beating Washington
and Jefferson 34–0 and Pennsylvania 37–0.

  If Tech could win at Pitt, Heisman would likely be picking up his second national championship, but the offense could not get on track. Pitt’s defense was stifling, and the Panthers offense streaked through gaps in the Yellow Jackets defense.

  The game’s ending proved disappointing for Coach Heisman. His trek to a second national championship was derailed. Pittsburgh won 32–0.

  Despite Pitt’s season being cut short because of the Spanish Flu pandemic (five games were eliminated from the schedule), the Panthers went 4–1 and were named the 1918 national football champions. Tech finished 1918 with a 41–0 win over Auburn and a record of 6–1.

  War touches all

  World War I had a crippling effect on college enrollment as well as football.

  Young men who were ripe for the game in 1917 and 1918 were in the sights of Army and Marine recruiters. Appealing to their emotions to fight in a war to end all wars, many who should have been on their way to enroll in college and report for fall football practice enlisted and reported for basic training.

  About a dozen from Georgia Tech’s championship team, feeling the need to answer the call of patriotic duty, enlisted in the military and were off to war.

  It was no different for Georgia Tech than for Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Ohio State, or Cumberland University.

  The war decimated Cumberland’s enrollment from 1917 to 1919. In 1917 the law school conferred degrees on 82 students including most of those who had made the trip to Atlanta the previous fall to play Tech.

  By January 1918 the number of law graduates had dwindled to sixteen. In June the university handed out degrees to thirty-eight, less than half the number who had graduated the year before. Outside of the law school, there were only a couple of dozen students in the college who graduated in 1918.