Football 1917

With the first World War raging on in Europe the supply of able bodied young men to play football was in short supply, but in order to help keep the morale up at home the games of college and Pro football continued on.

Our journey through the history of football rules in this series has taken us up to the season of 1916 in Part 36. This edition will high light some of the pinnacles of the game during the 1917 season but will especially focus on another legendary pioneer of the game.

Please pardon this interruption...

The 1917 season was somewhat uneventful in the area of innovation and rules revision. The nation and the world had other things on their minds as World War I was raging on in Europe. The US would enter into the conflict in 1917 as information was intercepted by intelligence agencies that the Germans would use submarine warfare against American ships.

Football would be played though during this era of war. Pitt once again under Pop Warner’s command would be undefeated but they would not earn the title of National Champions for 1917.  Another well known legendary coach would have the nation’s top team, John Heisman and the Golden Tornadoes of Georgia Tech would win the honors. 

Coach John Heisman

Heisman and the Georgia Tech squad had a lot of success in the two previous seasons, going undefeated in each, but had the “setback” of a tie in each that prevented the National Title from coming their way. A powerful offense was the key to the Heisman coached teams and this was quite evident in a 1916 game where the Golden Tornadoes defeated Cumberland College 222-0 in the most lopsided win in football history.  I guess one might say the defense was not too shabby either. The history of this contest is most intriguing due to the fact that Georgia Tech was defeated in baseball (Heisman also coached baseball and basketball for the school) 22-0 by a professional team from Nashville posing as Cumberland College. That Fall Cumberland dropped their football program but the vengeful Heisman lured Cumberland with a guarantee of $500.00 of the gate to send football team to play the Jackets in 1916. The 16 players that ended up representing Cumberland were from a fraternity there and had little football knowledge. Heisman not only wanted to avenge the baseball loss but wanted to embarrass sportswriters who awarded the National Championship to the highest scoring team, and it sounds as if he accomplished his goals.

Heisman had been around football since 1886 when he played the game for a high school team in Western Pennsylvania. He went on to further his playing career at Brown University and later at Penn where he earned a law degree that he never used. John went into coaching due to an interesting circumstance. During his last playing season at Penn he injured his eyes in an indoor game at Madison Square Garden due to the galvanic lighting system used at the Garden at that time. The team doctor prescribed that he rest his eyes for a few years and not work in law. Heisman followed the good doctor’s orders and started a career in coaching as he became the first coach at Oberlin College in Ohio. He left there to coach at Buchtel College (now known as the University of Akron) where he developed the snap from center for football. Previously the center would roll the ball back, most of the time with their foot. This was cumbersome for Buchtel’s 6'-4" quarterback so Heisman taught his center to pass the ball backwards between his legs in the air to the QB. After returning to Oberlin for a one year stint he coached at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute( later known as Auburn). The transient coach then went on to Clemson from 1899 to 1903 and in 1904 he was hired as the first paid football coach in the country at Georgia Tech earning an annual salary of $2250.00 per year plus thirty percent of the net gate revenue for home games.

Heisman developed an innovative concept called the” jump shift” or better known as the “Heisman Shift.” while at the helm of Georgia Tech. 
In the book, The Heisman: A Symbol of Excellence, Gene Griessman writes, "Heisman's teams depended on speed and precision maneuvers to win. One of his best-known formations involved the jump shift, or Heisman shift, which he unveiled at Georgia Tech. That formation ... has been called the precursor of the 'T' and 'I' formations. Heisman's teams did not huddle. The quarterback would call plays and, sometimes, the teams would run a series of plays without any call." 
Heisman was a colorful character as a head coach. According to Ramblin Wreck.com, he loved the Theater and even spent summers as an actor at Summer Stock. Heisman used his acting ability to conduct an annual pre-season oratory on fumbling and its sinful nature. Holding up a football, Heisman would ask his players, "What is this? It is a prolate spheroid, an elongated sphere-in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing. Better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football."  If a player did sin and lose possession of the football, Heisman made that sinner bounce a football off a nearby fence 100 times at practice.
It is interesting to note that Heisman was not a true man of virtue when it came to the rules of football at the time. He would illegally hand signal plays to his team, that seldom huddled, from the sideline.                    
John Heisman went on to become the first President of the New York Sportsman’s Club and the year after his death in 1936 the trophy presented by the club to the Nation’s top football player bore his name. And with that award this great man’s name will live on in history.

The Pros

With World War I raging men to play football was sparse but the game was still continured back home. The Tonawanda defeated the Rochester Jeffersons for the New York State Title while the Canton AC team defeated Massilon for the Ohio State Title.

The banner photo is a photograph of the 1917 Georgia Tech Golden Tornado football team, published in the New York Times.
Top row (left to right): Charles Wahoo, John W. Heisman, William F. Thweatt, William C. Mathes, William Higgins, Dan Whelchel, William Fincher, Ray S. Ulrich
Middle row (left to right): Charles Johnson, George Phillips, Joe Guyon, John Rogers, Hamilton Dowling, Alton R. Concord, Robert S. Bell
Bottom row (left to right): Everett Strupper, Marshall Guill, Albert Hill, Walker Carpenter, Theodore Shaver, Judy Harlan. By Tracy Mathewson and Walter Winn. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com