type, but one who preferred a life of physical action to one of monastic
contemplation. Although he was essentially a sincere, highly sensitive person
in his personal dealings, he could also be severe, even bitterly vindictive
when he chose to be. As a part-time actor who performed in summer stock,
he apparently allowed his histrionic side to have center stage in creating a
public persona that often contradicted itself.

John Heisman, then, was a many-faceted individual who was an extremely
complex, elusive figure, but nonetheless still fascinating in the diversity of
his personal makeup. He characteristically professed a single-minded devo-
tion to the proper development of a sport that started out as a simple game
played by schoolboys and young college men but that he helped evolve into
a national ritual that enthralls a huge segment of the American population
each fall. Like many of the mercurial running backs he coached, Heisman
was continually changing his course of direction, testing the resistance before
him to discover the best way to achieve any personal goal he may have set
for himself. And like many of the linemen he coached, Heisman was suffi-
ciently stubborn to hold his ground if he knew such a reaction was necessary
to bring about a proper result. As a naturally success-oriented person who
took his cue from the fabulous go-getter types that big business and industry
spawned during the formative years of his life, Heisman and the corporate
nature of football were truly made for each other, as his overall coaching
success bears out.

From a humanistic perspective, the story of John Heisman is really the
story of American football. The fact that his life ( 1869-1936) directly par-
alleled the evolution of intercollegiate football makes him a convenient point
of reference for recognizing significant events in the complex history of the
game. Because Heisman coached at eight different schools of varying missions
in every part of the country except the far West, and because his coaching
career spanned some of the most momentous years in American history, he
is an appropriate figure to relate to not only the growth of intercollegiate
athletics but also the growth of American higher education. His public in-
volvement also connects him with important political, economic, and social
developments that had an impact on American society and sports during his
day. These culturally significant factors govern the form and shape this book
ultimately takes.

My underlying purpose here, then, is not so much biographical as it is
biocultural, revealing how the strength of one man's personality and the
sociocultural background of his time affected the emergence of an indigenous
American public ritual--the Big Game. In the process, this book tries to do
more than just cover the highlights of Heisman's life and his personal con-
tributions to the development of American football. It also discusses other
influential coaches' contributions while tracing the game's sixty-year (c. 1880-
1940) expansion into a national sport.

On yet another level, this book is the story of how college football devel-

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