John Heisman - Early Coaching Career

Early Coaching Career

Heisman coached at Oberlin College in 1892, went to Buchtel College in 1893, and returned to Oberlin the next year. While at Buchtel, Heisman had his hand in the first of many permanent alterations he would make to the sport: The center snap. This came out of necessity because the previous rule, which involved the center rolling the ball backwards, was too troublesome for Buchtel’s unusually tall quarterback, Harry Clark. It became clear that if the ball was thrown to him, the play could go on with less complication which evolved into a common practice now known as the snap that begins every play in American football. In 1895, he became the fifth head football coach at Auburn University, where he stayed for five years. In 1900, Heisman went to Clemson University, where he coached four winning seasons. A street on the campus bears his name to honor him.

Read more about this topic:  John Heisman

Famous quotes containing the words early and/or career:

    Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I restore myself when I’m alone. A career is born in public—talent in privacy.
    Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962)