HEISMAN

The legendary coach’s great-nephew, and New York Times best-selling author Mark Schlabach, will offer college football fans across the country the first authorized and definitive biography of the man whose life has been memorialized by the Heisman Trophy.

To the select fraternity of men who have won the Heisman Trophy since its inception in 1935, the award is so much more than just a football trophy. The Heisman is a national symbol of collegiate football experience and competitiveness. Over time, it has become the single most celebrated individual award in all of American sports. Each year, as the college football season is played from September through December, the sport’s best players are playing with the same singular aspiration—to hoist the Heisman Trophy in New York in early December.

Although the Heisman Trophy is 76 years old, it does not age. If anything, it gets stronger every year. No other individual award captures the country’s imagination like the Heisman does. From the very first time toe meets leather to kick off a college football season, fans across the country begin debating which players will be the top Heisman Trophy candidates. There are no other awards, in any other sport, that cast battle lines east or west of the Mississippi River, or north or south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

While the Heisman Trophy is the most famous individual award in sports, very little is known about John W. Heisman, the man the Downtown Athletic Club of New York chose to honor in 1936 by naming its national player of the year award for him.
Through thousands of pages of Heisman’s personal documents, writings, playbooks, and never-before-published correspondence with some of college football’s most famous coaches, the authors will chronicle Heisman’s life from a young boy growing up on the oil fields of northwest Pennsylvania to eventually becoming one of the sport’s most innovative and successful coaches.

In John W. Heisman: The Man Behind America’s Most Famous Trophy, John M. Heisman, the legendary coach’s great-nephew, and New York Times best-selling author Mark Schlabach, will offer college football fans across the country the first authorized and definitive biography of the man whose life has been memorialized by the Heisman Trophy.