COMMENTARY

The Heisman Trophy has outgrown its roots

NEW YORK | They call the place The Downtown Club now. New York is filled with places like this, apartments where there used to be something grander. The Jackie Robinson Apartments are on the corner in Flatbush where Ebbets Field used to be. Polo Grounds Towers are where Willie Mays and the New York Giants used to play.

And the Downtown Club is where the Downtown Athletic Club used to be. The Downtown Club has uniquely New York condos for sale. By “uniquely New York,” I of course mean “incredibly tiny.” Most of the condos are less than 500 square feet.

By “uniquely New York,” I also mean that according to the advertisement, one-bedroom apartments could be had for as little as $675,000 (or as much as $915,000 if you want to get a few dozen more square feet). Then again, the view in this 534-foot landmark is spectacular — you can practically see Brooklyn. There’s a magnificent lobby (with marble). Oh yeah — this is also where the Heisman Trophy was born.

The Heisman Trophy was the brainstorm of a few New York lawyers and executives who made up what they called the “Downtown Athletic Club.” The men of the D.A.C. (and they were all men until 1972) came together in 1926, right in the heart of the Roaring ’20s, the Jazz Age, that time for big dreams. They bought up some land by the Hudson River and talked about building the greatest athletic club in the world.

Then, the stock market crashed. America was launched into a Depression. Still, they went on. They could not buy any more land, so they built an Art Deco tower going straight up — 45 stories of brown brick. The plot of land was so small that the designers had no choice but to put the athletic amenities — a basketball court, tennis courts, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a miniature golf course, a driving range, a boxing ring — on separate floors. The elevators in the Downtown Athletic Club were roughly the size of minirefrigerators — they kind you see in college dorm rooms.

The members of the D.A.C. were always looking for ways to separate themselves from other private clubs in New York, so in 1935 they decided to give out an award to what they called “the most outstanding college football player.” That was the whole standard in 1935 (and it remains the only standard on the ballot today).

They had a trophy designed (the model was New York University’s Ed Smith), and then it was redesigned in part by Jim Crowley, who was one of Notre Dame’s famous Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (sportswriter Grantland Rice famously wrote: “In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.” So Jim Crowley must have been “Destruction”).

The first trophy was called the “D.A.C. Trophy,” and it was given to the University of Chicago’s Jay Berwanger (who said he used it as a doorstop). Less than a year later, coach John Heisman — who revolutionized the game by having his guards and tackle pull on running plays — died. The trophy was renamed the Heisman Trophy.

So that’s a little history lesson. Over time, the Heisman Trophy became the most famous award given out in college football, and then, perhaps, the most famous award in American sports. The Heisman Trophy was given out every year at the Downtown Athletic Club, but in truth it became bigger than the Downtown Athletic Club. People stopped using the facilities too much; the members were mostly there for the status of being connected to the Heisman. The miniature golf course was torn apart and the foundation began to crack. I stayed at the Downtown Athletic Club in 1991, and all I remember is that the radiator rattled like Jacob Marley’s ghost and that the tiny elevator paused for several seconds before going up, as if it were gathering its strength.

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To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com.