2009 reprint of 1921 First edition. John William Heisman (1869-1936) was a prominent American football player and college football coach in the early era of the sport and is the namesake of the Heisman Trophy awarded annually to the season's best college football player. He was an innovator and theoretician of the sport. He was a proponent of the legalization of the forward pass in 1906 and he originated the hike or hep shouted by the quarterback to start each play. He suggested that the game be divided into quarters instead of halves. Heisman subsequently became the athletics director of the...