Without Willard Prince, there would be no award honoring the top college football player.
By BRUCE LOWITT
Published December 13, 2003
SPRING HILL - John Heisman wanted nothing to do with a trophy. But Willard B. Prince wasn't going to be put off that easily.
Heisman was the first athletic director of the Downtown Athletic Club in New York when it opened in 1930. Prince was the first publisher and editor of the monthly DAC Journal and other trade magazines.
Heisman had been a lineman at the University of Pennsylvania while earning a law degree. In 1892 he began a 36-year coaching career at eight colleges, including Clemson (19 wins, 3 losses, 2 ties in four seasons) and Georgia Tech (100-29-6 in 16).
He was responsible for the forward pass, handoff, flea-flicker, hidden-ball trick and direct-center snap (previously the ball was rolled to the quarterback) and was as highly regarded as coaching contemporaries Amos Alonzo Stagg and Knute Rockne.
In 1935 Prince approached Heisman with the idea of creating an annual award given to the Outstanding College Football Player of the United States. "He thought it would be a good way to get the club some publicity," said John Prince, Willard's son, owner of what is believed to be a collection of Heisman memorabilia second only to the Downtown Athletic Club's.
"My father said John told him, "It's not going to work. Football is a team sport; you can't single out one player."' Prince said. "But my father wouldn't give up on it."
He asked New York newspapermen and broadcasters what they thought. "They loved it," John Prince said, "so he went to the DAC and pushed it and the board told him, "It's your baby; you run with it.' They must have liked the idea of the publicity."
Willard Prince was the committee's first chairman. More accurately, he was the committee. Sculptor Frank Eliscu was commissioned to create the trophy. Ed Smith, an outstanding player on the 1934 NYU team, was his model. Prince drew up ballots with lines for first choice (three points), second (two) and third (one) and sent them to about 70 writers and broadcasters, most of whom had no idea what the award meant.
Neither, it seems, did John Prince. He was 7 then. Willard would bring ballots home to Brooklyn and set up a card table and John, his older sister and brother and their father would go to work. Sixty-five ballots were returned. "I'm pretty sure I had no idea what I was counting," John said. The next year the job was farmed out to a company. This year there are 927 voters.
Halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago was awarded the DAC Trophy in December 1935. The following October, Heisman died of bronchial pneumonia at age 66. The trophy was renamed in his honor. Willard Prince remained committee chairman until his death in 1949.
John Prince, 75, a former automotive products salesman, has attended most of the 68 award ceremonies. He has met more than 50 winners; some remain close friends, he said. Prince annually receives four footballs from the Downtown Athletic Club signed by that year's winner. They are auctioned by Prince to raise money for multiple sclerosis research. Leslie, 50, John and Sally's daughter, was diagnosed with MS 28 years ago.
One signed by 1963 winner Roger Staubach was bought in Dallas for $10,000, Prince said; one of 2001 winner Eric Crouch's went to a Nebraskan for $16,000. In 15 years he has raised about $250,000.
The Downtown Athletic Club's doors have been closed since the Sept.11 attack on the nearby World Trade Center in 2001. For now, its Heisman memorabilia is in storage, save for the portraits of the winners displayed at tonight's ceremony.
