Heisman Trophy history lesson: 90 years, with only one winner from Long Island
University of Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde, from Elmont, was congratulated by his mother Josie and father Al after being named winner of the Heisman Trophy at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York on Dec. 7, 1986. Credit: AP
Just over 90 years ago, on Dec. 9, 1935, one of the most storied trophies in sports was awarded for the first time in New York City.
University of Chicago halfback Jay Berwanger was the first recipient of the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy as the season’s most outstanding college football player east of the Mississippi River.
It would be renamed the Heisman Trophy in 1936 after legendary coach and Downtown Athletic Club director John Heisman’s death, and it would include football players nationwide.
Long Island has had only one Heisman winner: former Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde, a Sewanhaka High School alum, in 1986. Testaverde, who went on to play for the Jets and six other teams in a 21-year NFL career, was the runaway winner that season, easily beating Temple running back Paul Palmer and Michigan quarterback Jim Harbaugh. He threw for 2,557 yards and 26 touchdowns with an offense that featured numerous future NFL players, including Hall of Famer Michael Irvin.
Miami’s win over top-ranked Oklahoma early that season elevated the Hurricanes to No. 1 and made Testaverde the Heisman favorite. His passer rating (165.8) led Division I-A (now known as FBS) as he led the Hurricanes to an 11-1 record and a No. 2 ranking in the final AP poll after losing the Fiesta Bowl to Penn State.
Former Syracuse quarterback Don McPherson, a West Hempstead High School graduate, was the runner-up in 1987, losing to Notre Dame’s Tim Brown. McPherson was taken in the sixth round of the 1988 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles but spent most of his professional career playing in the CFL. He retired in 1994.
Manhasset product Jim Brown — an NFL legend, Syracuse great and perhaps Long Island’s best athlete ever — never finished higher than fifth, in 1956. Former Maryland quarterback Boomer Esiason (East Islip) and former West Virginia running back Amos Zereoue (Mepham High School) each finished 10th in 1983 and 1997, respectively.
Like Long Island, New York City certainly is not a college football mecca, but it has remained the home of the Heisman.
“A symbolic thing of college football is that when the Heisman Trophy is awarded, it’s going to be awarded somewhere in New York,” said Denis Crawford, a historian and exhibit designer at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta. “Because it was their award, they went through all the effort to get it created. They organized it. They organized the vote. They helped to celebrate excellence in college football. It would be wrong for it to go anywhere else.”
Prestige grew over time
The Heisman Trophy on display in 2024. Credit: AP/Corey Sipkin
The trophy itself was the creation of sculptor Frank Eliscu, who was only 23 when he designed the now-iconic 45-pound bronze structure of a football player giving a stiff-arm. Eliscu was a sculptor and art teacher from Washington Heights who died in 1996 at age 83. After completing his degree at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1934, Eliscu was commissioned by the Downtown Athletic Club to create the trophy.
Berwanger, the first winner, appreciated the honor, but who knew what the Heisman would become?
“Obviously, it was the first one given out, so the prestige around it was not very high,” Landon Bundy, the director of sports information and promotions at the University of Chicago, told Newsday. “It wasn’t the national media and all that kind of stuff. So he got that award and didn’t really know what to do with it. His aunt had a door in her kitchen that she could not get to stay open. So he gave that to her, and that served as her doorstop in her kitchen for about 20 years, because it was just another trophy.”
Though the trophy looks the same 90 years later, the Heisman prestige has only grown. Either Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love, Indiana’s Fernando Mendoza, Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia or Ohio State’s Julian Sayin will be crowned as the newest Heisman winner on Saturday night at Jazz at Lincoln Center in Manhattan.
“I will always argue it is the most iconic trophy in all of American sports, and I think a very good reason for that is the way that it grew with the sport,” Crawford said.
Heisman Trophy Trust vice president Tim Henning said: “The award has changed as college football has grown. Even from when I started 25 years ago, it was a much smaller event. You always had a lot of people that were interested in the Heisman, but I think the growth and the popularity of college football has gone hand-in-hand with the growth and popularity of the Heisman.”
Tracing the first Heisman
The College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta has a temporary exhibit celebrating 90 years of the Heisman, which runs through April. Crawford worked with Henning to recreate portraits of all 90 winners, from Berwanger and 1936 winner Larry Kelley (Yale) to 2024 winner Travis Hunter (Colorado).
Other artifacts include the wax mold used to create the trophy, game-worn memorabilia such as 1937 winner Clint Frank’s Yale jersey, campaign souvenirs such as former Ohio State lineman and 1996 finalist Orlando Pace’s pancake mix (promoting his proclivity for pancake blocks) and much more.
In November 1935, Berwanger was alerted via telegram that he had won. He later traveled to New York to be honored at a dinner and gave a speech.
Berwanger did everything for the Maroons, playing quarterback, running back, kick returner, punt returner, punter, kicker — you name it. He was nicknamed the “one-man team.” He rushed for 577 yards, passed for 405, returned kickoffs for 359, scored six touchdowns and added five PATs for 41 points, according to the University of Chicago, a then-Big Ten program that now plays in Division III.
Berwanger was taken first overall by the Eagles in the inaugural NFL Draft in 1936 and was traded to the Bears. Neither team could meet his financial demands, though, and he never played a down in the NFL. He ultimately worked in the rubber industry and enrolled in the Navy during World War II.
Berwanger, who died in 2002 at 88, also refereed and wrote a sports column for the Chicago Daily News in his spare time.
Decades later, Berwanger’s trophy was returned from his aunt’s floor back to the University of Chicago, where it is on display at the Ratner Athletics Center.
“A dad and a son came up to me and were like, ‘So I heard the first-ever Heisman Trophy was here. Can you show us where that is? Like, that’s so cool,’ ” Bundy said. “The people that know that it’s there, it’s a huge piece of history. They all love it.”
Ben Dickson is Newsday Sports' general assignment reporter. He joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
