Close your eyes and picture the Heisman Trophy. The form is easy to conjure, a graceful, fluid pose that is football past and football present in one dignified figure ... The story of the Heisman Trophy is an american epic. -- from the Preface No sport in America can match the pageantry, raw emotion, and thrilling tradition of college football. It is a world in which a twenty-year-old kid can become a national sensation overnight, in which coaches are deified and rivalries burn white-hot. And in this world, there is no individual award so revered as the Heisman Trophy. Every yearsince 1935, one player has run, thrown, or kicked his way into the pantheon of American sport. From Nile "The Cornbelt Comet" Kinnick in the '30s, West Point's legendary backfield of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis in the '40s, and Paul Hornung in the '50s to Ernie Davis, the Jackie Robinson of college football, miracle worker Doug Flutie, and modern-day Sunday warrior Eddie George, the history of the Heisman gives us insight into the heart of America through the lives of the heroes that entranced an entire nation for one brilliant season. Extraordinary in ways that transcend athletic ability, Heisman winners have gone on to become war heroes, Fortune 500 CEOs, and high-level politicians. As John Heisman himself once said, the Heisman Trophy "is meant to exemplify the grandeur of a thousand men." Here within these pages are intimate portraits of some of the winners who also exemplify the grit and glory of America's beloved game and of the coaching giants such as Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and Red Blaik, who inspired the winners to achieve.Told in the evocative words of Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Bill Pennington, their heart-stopping experiences on the field and off will have Americans enthralled until the final page is turned. Close your eyes and picture the Heisman Trophy. The form is easy to conjure, a graceful, fluid pose that is football past and football present in one dignified figure ... The story of the Heisman Trophy is an american epic. -- from the Preface No sport in America can match the pageantry, raw emotion, and thrilling tradition of college football. It is a world in which a twenty-year-old kid can become a national sensation overnight, in which coaches are deified and rivalries burn white-hot. And in this world, there is no individual award so revered as the Heisman Trophy. Every yearsince 1935, one player has run, thrown, or kicked his way into the pantheon of American sport. From Nile "The Cornbelt Comet" Kinnick in the '30s, West Point's legendary backfield of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis in the '40s, and Paul Hornung in the '50s to Ernie Davis, the Jackie Robinson of college football, miracle worker Doug Flutie, and modern-day Sunday warrior Eddie George, the history of the Heisman gives us insight into the heart of America through the lives of the heroes that entranced an entire nation for one brilliant season. Extraordinary in ways that transcend athletic ability, Heisman winners have gone on to become war heroes, Fortune 500 CEOs, and high-level politicians. As John Heisman himself once said, the Heisman Trophy "is meant to exemplify the grandeur of a thousand men." Here within these pages are intimate portraits of some of the winners who also exemplify the grit and glory of America's beloved game and of the coaching giants such as Bear Bryant, Woody Hayes, and Red Blaik, who inspired the winners to achieve.Told in the evocative words of Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist Bill Pennington, their heart-stopping experiences on the field and off will have Americans enthralled until the final page is turned. Bill Pennington is a reporter for the New York Times and has been writing about sports fortwenty-five years. A former syndicated sports columnist, Pennington is a ten-time finalist andfive-time winner of the Associated Press SportsEditors' national writing contest. He lives with his wife, Joyce, and three children in Warwick, New York. The Heisman Great American Stories of the Men Who Won By Bill Pennington ReganBooks Copyright © 2005 Bill Pennington All right reserved. ISBN: 9780060554729 Chapter One "Is It Not Meant to Exemplify the Grandeur of a Thousand Men?" The Downtown Athletic Club and John W. Heisman In 1926 America, unemployment was virtually nonexistent. The standardof living was at an all-time high. Post?World War I America had the mostpowerful economy on earth, presaging the still young country's expansionas a world power. In a changing century, America charged forward withrootless abandon. The political and financial leadership of America in 1926had been raised in a very different country, a primitive place of wide, unchartedopen plains. The newspapers of their childhoods had been filledwith events like the massacre of General George Armstrong Custer, aseminal episode in American history commemorating its fiftieth anniversaryin 1926. But in the industrial so