Question: What major athletic award is named after Rice University’s first full-time football coach?
Answer: The Heisman Trophy, named after John William Heisman. Born in Cleveland in 1869, he played as a lineman at Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, despite weighing less than 160 pounds. After graduating with a law degree from Penn, he coached football at more than half a dozen colleges, including Auburn, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Penn, and Rice. Heisman developed or popularized several innovations to the game of football, including the shift, the forward pass, the “hike” to start each play, and displaying the down and yards to gain on the field’s scoreboard.
