Tom Harmon

September 28, 1919 – Tom Harmon was a former University of Michigan halfback who played for the Wolverines from 1938 through the 1940 seasons. 

According to the footballfoundation.org site, Harmon was a playmaker for Michigan, and they were big plays at that. Just in the 1939 season alone, Tom picked off an Iowa pass for a 95-yard return, had touchdown runs of 65 yards and 35 yards in the game against Penn, and scored all of the Wolverine points in a 27-7 shellacking of Yale!

During the 1940 season, Harmon celebrated his 21st birthday by frustrating the University of California with scoring runs of 94, 86, 70, and 65 yards! Tom Harmon may have saved his best collegiate game for his last one, though. In the final game of that season against rival Ohio State, he threw two TD passes, ran for three other scores, returned three kicks for a total of 81 yards, punted three times with a 50-yard average, kicked four extra points, and intercepted three passes. The home Ohio State crowd was so in awe of his performance that they gave their worthy opponent a standing ovation at the end of the 40-0 blanking of the Buckeyes. That is some great sportsmanship that we all could learn from in this era! 

Tom Harmon easily led the nation in scoring in 1939 and 1940 and won the Heisman Trophy in 1940. After college, he became a World War II pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps and was shot down twice, receiving both a Purple Heart and the Silver Star for his brave service. After the war, Tom played for the LA Rams for a couple of seasons in the NFL and then transitioned into broadcasting football games. The National Football Foundation accepted Tom Harmon into their College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.