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John W. HeismanJohn W. Heisman was a prominent player and subsequently coach in the early era of American football. Heisman played for Brown University (1887-1889) and the University of Pennsylvania (1890-1891). He was the coach of the winning Georgia Tech Engineers when they defeated the Cumberland University Bulldogs 222-0 in a game played in Atlanta in the 1910s, in the most one-sided college football game ever played, during which the Engineers scored with every possession of the ball. Heisman's running up the score against a totally outmanned opponent was to prove a point that many would still consider valid, namely that the voters in media polls purporting to rank college football teams pay far too much opinion to the margin of victory at the expense of other factors, including the quality of opponents played, and that a truly superior team can schedule opponents so weak that it can essentially score as many points as it desires, rendering margin of victory useless as a measure of relative strength compared to other good teams. Heisman subsequently became the athletics director of the former Downtown Athletic Club in Manhattan, New York, and in 1936 the Club began awarding annually in his honor what is now almost universally referred to as the Heisman Trophy, supposedly given to the season's best collegiate player. Voters for this award consist primarily of media representatives, allocated by regions across the country in order to filter out supposed regional bias, and former receipients. The award is now given out by the Yale Club.
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