Post by Coach Campbell on Jan 18, 2009 9:34:29 GMT
Of old German stock, John Michael Heisman and his wife, Sarah, had
settled in Cleveland to raise a family and build a better future for themselves. 3
A cooper by trade, the senior Heisman, upon hearing stories of the fabulous
happenings in Titusville, promptly moved his family there and started up a
lucrative business manufacturing barrels for the oil industry. 4 Although John
the younger had been born in Cleveland in 1869, his adolescence was to
become so intimately involved with the Pennsylvania boomtown that there-
after he would identify with it as his spiritual place of origin. Furthermore,
during the future coach's growing-up years in the 1870s and 1880s, something
of the commercial fever and atmosphere of the 1860s still lingered and must
have had a vivid, lasting influence on the personal makeup of an ambitious
and impressionable youth. As such, he was probably looking ahead to the
time and the opportunity to make his way in the world, after the manner of
the popular Horatio Alger go-getter typeto run with the ball. Until several eastern college players returned home on
vacation and demonstrated this innovation, John and his teammates at Ti-
tusville High had been playing soccer style. The ball-carrying show put on
by the college men was a revelation: "Then and there the old game lost its
savor. From that moment nothing of football which did not permit running
with the ball appealed to me." 6 But in the long run, Heisman's fascination
with the rules and strategies of the game and how they might be modified
to benefit both participants and spectators would inspire him to come up
with some of football's most daring innovations as well as to compel him to
take on a self-appointed role as guardian of the game's ultimate destiny.
In 1984, the city of Titusville, in observing the 125th anniversary of the
"Birthplace of the Oil Industry," dedicated an athletic field to Coach Heis-
man's memory. In attendance were William Lee Heisman and his son, who
were both featured speakers during the ceremonies. At one point in his
speech, the elder Heisman made a significant observation about the influence
of the Titusville environment on his uncle: "The process of the greening of
a football [coach] began in Titusville," he said. "Titusville, you have the
same hills and turf that John Heisman walked. He honed his skills here." 7
And these were skills that were competitive not only in a strictly athletic
sense but also in a self-motivated, success-oriented manner.
A basic contention of this book is that John Heisman's lifelong interest in
athletics, particularly the game of football, was honed to a considerable degree
during his youth by the predominantly capitalistic and commercial ambiance
that Titusville had inherited from its boom days. Within this goal-oriented
side of the American belief that success in work and material acquisition is
in itself a sign of God's favor and therefore a kind of religious experience,
John Heisman and the game of football discovered themselves. Consequently,
after the American version of the game started to evolve, it demanded the
leadership of empathetic go-getter types like John Heisman to see that the
game kept to its course in order to realize its true destiny. As a naturally
symbolic contest inspired by the nineteenth-century passion for land acqui-
sition and the expansion of business and industry, football would evolve from
these roots to find its fullest expression in twentieth-century technology.
If the game of American football can be categorized as the corporate game,
as indeed it has been, 8 its natural origins and gradual development from a
British-style game into today's purely American version of corporately struc-
tured play stem from the era of the doggedly acquisitive capitalists--the John
D. Rockefellers and others of his ilk, who, in letting nothing stand in their
way to achieve the goal and rewards of material success, inspired the pro-
totypical leadership model for the expanding corporate world of their day.
Their strategies for success had a dominant influence on university men of
the eastern educational establishment, men of individualistic mold and bold
determination who were ultimately responsible for football's development
into a purely American game, which, as the years passed, became increasingly
of juvenile fiction.
Although information is scarce about this early part of Heisman's life, we
do know that during his high-school years he was highly motivated to achieve
in both athletics and academics. Indeed, throughout his entire coaching ca-
reer, his evaluation of the worth of a good education inculcated in him the
persistent desire to impress upon his players the goal of academic excellence.
A nephew, William Lee Heisman, once recalled a locker-room incident that
exemplified his uncle's impatience with any player who thought playing
football was more important than getting an education:
My uncle came busting through the door and went over to this guy and said, "Red,
you can't play today because you haven't got your grades." The player looked up at
my uncle and said, "Coach, don't you know that the sportswriters call this toe on
my right foot the million-dollar toe?" My uncle snapped right back quick and said,
"Yeah, but what good is it if you only have a fifteen-cent head?" 5
As the outstanding student of his graduating class of 1887, young Heisman
had been captain of the baseball team, a champion gymnast, and, in spite
of his slight size, a member of the football teams of 1884, 1885, and 1886.
But of all sports it was the game of football, then still in its developmental
stages, that made such an indelible impression on him that it would later
change the direction of his life. Heisman's own story relates that it had been
the inspired purchase of a ten-cent rules book that had motivated him to
begin a serious study of the game as well as beginning a lifelong love affair
with it. The thing that had prompted his procurement of the rules book was
the discovery that the American version of football actually allowed a player
settled in Cleveland to raise a family and build a better future for themselves. 3
A cooper by trade, the senior Heisman, upon hearing stories of the fabulous
happenings in Titusville, promptly moved his family there and started up a
lucrative business manufacturing barrels for the oil industry. 4 Although John
the younger had been born in Cleveland in 1869, his adolescence was to
become so intimately involved with the Pennsylvania boomtown that there-
after he would identify with it as his spiritual place of origin. Furthermore,
during the future coach's growing-up years in the 1870s and 1880s, something
of the commercial fever and atmosphere of the 1860s still lingered and must
have had a vivid, lasting influence on the personal makeup of an ambitious
and impressionable youth. As such, he was probably looking ahead to the
time and the opportunity to make his way in the world, after the manner of
the popular Horatio Alger go-getter typeto run with the ball. Until several eastern college players returned home on
vacation and demonstrated this innovation, John and his teammates at Ti-
tusville High had been playing soccer style. The ball-carrying show put on
by the college men was a revelation: "Then and there the old game lost its
savor. From that moment nothing of football which did not permit running
with the ball appealed to me." 6 But in the long run, Heisman's fascination
with the rules and strategies of the game and how they might be modified
to benefit both participants and spectators would inspire him to come up
with some of football's most daring innovations as well as to compel him to
take on a self-appointed role as guardian of the game's ultimate destiny.
In 1984, the city of Titusville, in observing the 125th anniversary of the
"Birthplace of the Oil Industry," dedicated an athletic field to Coach Heis-
man's memory. In attendance were William Lee Heisman and his son, who
were both featured speakers during the ceremonies. At one point in his
speech, the elder Heisman made a significant observation about the influence
of the Titusville environment on his uncle: "The process of the greening of
a football [coach] began in Titusville," he said. "Titusville, you have the
same hills and turf that John Heisman walked. He honed his skills here." 7
And these were skills that were competitive not only in a strictly athletic
sense but also in a self-motivated, success-oriented manner.
A basic contention of this book is that John Heisman's lifelong interest in
athletics, particularly the game of football, was honed to a considerable degree
during his youth by the predominantly capitalistic and commercial ambiance
that Titusville had inherited from its boom days. Within this goal-oriented
side of the American belief that success in work and material acquisition is
in itself a sign of God's favor and therefore a kind of religious experience,
John Heisman and the game of football discovered themselves. Consequently,
after the American version of the game started to evolve, it demanded the
leadership of empathetic go-getter types like John Heisman to see that the
game kept to its course in order to realize its true destiny. As a naturally
symbolic contest inspired by the nineteenth-century passion for land acqui-
sition and the expansion of business and industry, football would evolve from
these roots to find its fullest expression in twentieth-century technology.
If the game of American football can be categorized as the corporate game,
as indeed it has been, 8 its natural origins and gradual development from a
British-style game into today's purely American version of corporately struc-
tured play stem from the era of the doggedly acquisitive capitalists--the John
D. Rockefellers and others of his ilk, who, in letting nothing stand in their
way to achieve the goal and rewards of material success, inspired the pro-
totypical leadership model for the expanding corporate world of their day.
Their strategies for success had a dominant influence on university men of
the eastern educational establishment, men of individualistic mold and bold
determination who were ultimately responsible for football's development
into a purely American game, which, as the years passed, became increasingly
of juvenile fiction.
Although information is scarce about this early part of Heisman's life, we
do know that during his high-school years he was highly motivated to achieve
in both athletics and academics. Indeed, throughout his entire coaching ca-
reer, his evaluation of the worth of a good education inculcated in him the
persistent desire to impress upon his players the goal of academic excellence.
A nephew, William Lee Heisman, once recalled a locker-room incident that
exemplified his uncle's impatience with any player who thought playing
football was more important than getting an education:
My uncle came busting through the door and went over to this guy and said, "Red,
you can't play today because you haven't got your grades." The player looked up at
my uncle and said, "Coach, don't you know that the sportswriters call this toe on
my right foot the million-dollar toe?" My uncle snapped right back quick and said,
"Yeah, but what good is it if you only have a fifteen-cent head?" 5
As the outstanding student of his graduating class of 1887, young Heisman
had been captain of the baseball team, a champion gymnast, and, in spite
of his slight size, a member of the football teams of 1884, 1885, and 1886.
But of all sports it was the game of football, then still in its developmental
stages, that made such an indelible impression on him that it would later
change the direction of his life. Heisman's own story relates that it had been
the inspired purchase of a ten-cent rules book that had motivated him to
begin a serious study of the game as well as beginning a lifelong love affair
with it. The thing that had prompted his procurement of the rules book was
the discovery that the American version of football actually allowed a player