Book Reviews

When Oberlin Was King of the Gridiron: The Heisman Years. By Nat Brandt. (Kent, Ohio: The Kent State University Press, 2001. xii, 230 pp. Paper, $18.00, ISBN 0-87338-684-1.)

It was an all-too-familiar story of the 90's: Ohio's college football powerhouse regularly trounced a series greater or lesser teams from throughout the region, but each year the team and a certain controversial coach named John were never quite able to win the big game against Michigan. Whereas most of the scarlet and gray faithful at this point will roll their eyes and say they have heard it all before, chances are actually likely that they have not. The '90s were the 1890s, the John was John Heisman, and the Ohio football powerhouse was Oberlin College. In a well-researched book steeped in the flavor of college life in the 1890s, Nat Brandt tells the unlikely story of how Oberlin College went from a school where football was forbidden to one of the strongest teams in the nation.

Oberlin in the late 1800s still took its Christian education mission very seriously, and the faculty at first refused to allow students to play anything other than intramural baseball. However, with the growing influence of the physical education and "Muscular Christianity" movements of the time, as well as the persistent entreaties of Oberlin students, the administration finally relented in the early 1890s. They allowed the students a team and limited intercollegiate play, and Oberlin played to a 2-2 record over their first two years. What followed, however, was a startling transformation into a football juggernaut. The primary agent of that transformation was John Heisman.

Brandt argues that Heisman–yes, THAT Heisman–revolutionized American football more than any other early figure besides Walter Camp. His fundamental innovations included displaying downs and yards on the scoreboard, the use of both guards as blockers for the runner, drawing up a pre-set series of plays to start a game, sending signals in from the sideline, the long count, snapping the ball directly to the quarterback, and even the use of the word "hike." As a player-coach at Oberlin (and for a year at Buchtel College in Akron), Heisman created winning teams through a combination of innovation, hard training, and a gruff, authoritarian style ("Better to have died a small boy," he intoned to his recruits each year, "than to fumble this football"[65]). However, despite (or because of) his imperious manner, Heisman molded Oberlin into a team that regularly took on and defeated teams such as Illinois, The University of Chicago, and Ohio State. Oberlin's dominance within the state was such that they actually defeated Ohio State twice in 1892, by the lopsided scores of 40-0 and 50-0. The second defeat was so humiliating that to this day the Buckeye Athletic Department refuses to recognize this game in their records. Indeed, Oberlin's record in the 1890s is even more impressive when one considers other disputed scores listed as losses, including games against Michigan and Penn State (in the later case, Walter Camp overruled an official's decision by telegram after the game was over, awarding the win to the Nittany Lions).

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