The History of the Heisman Trophy

By 4Football Staff · October 24, 2026 · 10 min read

How a New York athletic club's trophy for the best college player in 1935 became football's best-known award, who it is named for, and the milestones that shaped it.

The Heisman Trophy is the one piece of college football hardware that people who never watch college football can name. The pose, a ball carrier with an arm out to ward off a tackler, appears in commercials and on posters, and people who have never played the game will strike it as a joke. But the award has a history that is longer, odder and more interesting than the pose suggests.

It was created by a private club in New York City, renamed after the death of a legendary coach, and has changed with the sport itself: more positions, more national exposure, more media, and, in recent years, a reconsideration of who deserved the honor. This article covers that history. How the voting works today is explained in the Heisman Trophy: how the voting works; this piece asks where the award came from and how it became what it is.

Who Was John Heisman?

The trophy is named for John W. Heisman, one of the most influential coaches and administrators in the early decades of the sport. He coached at several colleges, most famously at Georgia Tech, where he led teams in the early twentieth century. A game from 1916, in which Georgia Tech beat Cumberland College 222 to 0, is still the most lopsided score in the sport's records, though the circumstances of that game are a story of their own and are usually told with context about an old dispute between the two schools.

Heisman was also a thinker about the rules. He was an advocate of legalizing the forward pass at a time when many people were skeptical, and he is often credited with pushing for ideas that became part of the modern game. Some of the legends told about him are hard to verify, but you do not need all of them to see why a club that wanted to honor the best college player would name its award for someone with that standing.

Later in life, Heisman became athletic director of the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City. That is the connection that led to the trophy.

The Downtown Athletic Club Award, 1935

The Downtown Athletic Club was a private social and athletic club in lower Manhattan. In 1935 it created an annual award for the outstanding college football player in the country, and it called the prize the DAC Trophy. Heisman was the club's athletic director when the award began.

The first winner was Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago. Berwanger was a halfback, and his school was then a member of the Big Ten conference, in an era when the Midwest was one of the sport's centers. He was also the player selected first in the NFL's first draft in 1936, a distinction covered in the history of the NFL draft. Berwanger never played in the NFL; the story of why is often told as a contract dispute and the facts are worth checking in a dedicated biography.

A name change after a death

John Heisman died in October 1936, shortly before the club gave out its second award. The club renamed the prize the Heisman Memorial Trophy in his honor, and that is the name it carries. The 1936 winner, Larry Kelley of Yale, was the first to receive the trophy under its new name.

The Statue Itself

The trophy is a bronze statue of a running back with the ball in one arm, the other arm extended, and a leg raised. It was sculpted by Frank Eliscu, and the model for the pose was a player from New York University, Ed Smith, who was a member of the football team there. The statue is unusual because it depicts a generic player rather than a specific famous athlete, which is part of why it has been so widely reproduced.

Each year's winner receives a trophy of the same design. The image has been used in so many ways, on posters, in advertising and in imitation by fans, that the statue is as recognizable as the award itself.

The Early Decades: A National Honor Takes Shape

In the late 1930s and 1940s the Heisman was mostly a regional story. The voters were sportswriters and broadcasters, and the votes came from different regions of the country. Over time the process settled into a structure, with the country divided into regions, each with its own set of voters, so that a player from one part of the country could not win just because of local attention.

A few milestones from these years show how the award grew.

• 1930s. The first winners came from Chicago, then Yale in consecutive years, and in 1938 from Texas Christian University, where Davey O'Brien became the award's first winner from the Southwest.
• 1940s. Army produced winners in 1945 and 1946, at a time when the academies drew national attention during and after the Second World War.
• 1949. Leon Hart of Notre Dame won as an end, a reminder that the award was not always dominated by quarterbacks and running backs.

By the end of the 1940s the trophy was known beyond sports pages, and it had become a standard part of the football calendar.

Breaking Barriers

For a prize that claims to honor the best player in the country, the Heisman has a history that reflects the sport's own uneven path toward integration. Black players were part of college football long before the award was created, but opportunities varied dramatically by region and by school, and many top programs did not recruit Black athletes for decades. You can read more about that history in HBCUs and the history of football.

In 1961 Ernie Davis of Syracuse became the first Black player to win the Heisman Trophy. The award was a milestone in its own right and a reminder of how much the sport had changed. Davis was the first player chosen in the 1962 NFL draft, but he died of leukemia in 1963 without playing in an NFL game; his story is one of the most widely told in the sport's history.

Since then the list of winners has grown to reflect the sport's wider talent pool, though conversations about which players and positions are rewarded by the voting have never stopped.

Records, Firsts and Oddities

Over its history, the trophy has produced a collection of facts that are often quoted. These are the ones that are well documented.

Each of these has its own context. Griffin's back-to-back wins remain the only ones in the award's history, which is a measure of how difficult it is to keep the voters' attention for two years. Tebow's win opened the door to younger winners; before that, voters appeared to prefer upperclassmen, though no rule said so. Woodson's win was notable because he played mainly cornerback, and the award had long favored quarterbacks and running backs.

Who Wins and Why

If you look at the full list of winners, a pattern is obvious: the trophy has gone mostly to quarterbacks and running backs, with the occasional receiver and, only rarely, a defender. There are several reasons, and none of them are secrets.

1. Visibility. The positions that touch the ball most often produce the statistics and highlights that voters remember.
2. Team success. A winner usually plays for a team that has done well, because strong teams get the attention.
3. Timing. Voting takes place at the end of the regular season, so performances in the final weeks can matter more than a player's entire body of work.
4. Media. National television exposure helps, and the schools with the biggest broadcast presence can make a player known in a way that smaller programs cannot.

None of this means that the winners were unworthy. It means that the award reflects both performance and attention, and the proportion of each is debated every year.

Changes at the Top

The Downtown Athletic Club that created the trophy eventually closed its doors in the early 2000s. The trophy did not disappear. A separate organization, the Heisman Trophy Trust, took responsibility for the award and now runs the process, the ceremony and the use of the name. The ceremony has long been a television event and has been held in New York for much of its history; the exact venue and broadcast arrangements have changed over time, so look at the current announcement for details.

The trust has also had to make decisions about difficult cases. In 2010, Reggie Bush, the 2005 winner, returned the trophy after the NCAA found rules violations in his program at Southern California, and the trust vacated the 2005 award. In 2024 the trust restored it. Few events in the award's history have prompted as much discussion about what the trophy represents: performance, conduct, or both.

How the Voting Grew Up

The earliest ballots were cast by sportswriters and broadcasters, and the electorate has grown and changed over the decades. Two ideas have stayed in place. First, voting is organized by region, so that no part of the country controls the outcome. Second, voters rank three players, with points awarded by rank, so a player who is nobody's favorite but everybody's second choice can still do well. Past winners also hold votes, a tradition that gives the award a link to its own history. The exact size of the electorate and the voting window are set by the Heisman Trust and have changed over time, which is why the voting article linked above is the better place to check the current rules.

The trust describes the award in terms of the most outstanding player in college football whose performance reflects excellence with integrity. That last word has been tested more than once, and the Bush case described below is the best-known example.

How the Winners Have Changed by Era

Looking at the list of winners decade by decade tells you something about the sport itself, so long as you treat the patterns as broad trends rather than rules.

1. The 1930s and 1940s. Backs and ends dominated, in a sport where players often played both offense and defense. The winner was often the best all-around athlete on a strong team.
2. The 1950s through the 1970s. Running backs were heavily represented, which fits an era when most teams ran the ball on a majority of plays. Archie Griffin's two wins came in the middle of that stretch.
3. The 1980s and 1990s. The winners were more mixed: running backs, quarterbacks, a receiver and, in 1997, a cornerback who also returned kicks and caught passes.
4. The 2000s onward. Quarterbacks have won more often, as offenses have spread the field and the passing game has become a bigger part of the college sport.

This does not mean that the voters changed their minds about what they like. It means that the sport changed and the award followed.

The Heisman and the Pros

A common assumption is that the Heisman is a reliable predictor of professional success. History says otherwise. Some winners went on to long and honored careers. Others had short professional careers, struggled with injuries, played a different position, or never played in the NFL at all, as Berwanger's and Davis's stories show. The award measures one college season; the pros measure something different, and the transition between the two depends on size, speed, health and fit as much as on college production.

For readers who follow the draft, that is a useful reminder: the draft section of this site tracks prospects by what scouts see, and a Heisman is only one input.

What the Heisman Has Not Been

A short list of misunderstandings helps to put the history in perspective.

• It is not an NCAA award. It is run by a private trust.
• It is not a lifetime award. It covers a single season.
• It does not predict NFL success. Some winners had long professional careers and some never played a down.
• It is not the only major award. The sport has many others, described in college football awards beyond the Heisman.

For current candidates and results, see the rankings and scores pages on this site, and the college section for team and conference information.

The Short Version

• The Heisman began in 1935 as the DAC Trophy, awarded by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York; it was renamed in 1936 after John Heisman died.
• Jay Berwanger of Chicago was the first winner, and Larry Kelley of Yale was the first to receive the trophy under the Heisman name.
• The statue was sculpted by Frank Eliscu, with an NYU player named Ed Smith as the model.
• Ernie Davis became the first Black winner in 1961.
• Archie Griffin is the only two-time winner, Tim Tebow the first sophomore winner, and Charles Woodson the first mainly defensive winner.
• The trophy is now run by the Heisman Trophy Trust, which also made the decisions about the 2005 award.
• The list of winners favors quarterbacks and running backs because of visibility, team success and media attention.