December 13, 1973: John Cappelletti's Heisman Speech

As a native of New Jersey, and a fan of the football team at Rutgers University, I loathed Penn State University, their Nittany Lions, and their head coach, Joe Paterno, long before it was cool. But they have provided perhaps the greatest speech any college football player has ever given.

December 13, 1973: Penn State running back John Cappelletti wins the Heisman Trophy, as yet the only Nittany Lion so honored. His acceptance speech transcended sports.

Born in 1952 in the Philadelphia suburb of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, he was apparently no relation to New England Patriots legend Gino Cappelletti. He graduated from the storied Monsignor Bonner High School. He did not play for Penn State in his freshman season, 1970, because the NCAA did not let freshmen play on the varsity until 1972. He was a defensive back in his sophomore season, 1971, because the starting running back slots were occupied by Franco Harris and Lydell Mitchell, who went to 12 Pro Bowls between them. He did start as a junior in 1972.

In 1973, helping Penn State complete an undefeated regular season, he rushed for 1,522 yards and scored 17 touchdowns in 11 games. Paterno would later call him the best player he ever coached. Ohio State also went through the regular season undefeated, but they had 3 players splitting the votes that only 1 would have gotten: Offensive tackle John Hicks finished 2nd, sophomore running back Archie Griffin finished 5th, and linebacker Randy Gradishar finished 6th.

Giving his acceptance speech at the Downtown Athletic Club in Manhattan, after having been seated next to newly-sworn-in Vice President Gerald Ford, himself an All-American center at the University of Michigan in 1935, Cappelletti said:

I'm very happy to do something like this. I thought about it since the Heisman was announced 1- days ago, and this is to dedicate a trophy that a lot of people earned, I've earned, my parents and the people I've mentioned, and numerous other people that are here tonight and been with me for a long time.

The youngest member of my family, Joseph, is very ill. He has leukemia. If I can dedicate this trophy to him tonight, and give him a couple days of happiness, this is worth everything.

I think a lot of people think that I go through a lot on Saturdays and during the week, as most athletes do, and you get your bumps and bruises, and it is a terrific battle out there on the field. Only for me, it is on Saturdays, and it's only in the Fall. For Joseph, it is all year 'round, and it is a battle that is unending with him. And he puts up with much more than I'll ever put up with. And I think that this trophy is more his than mine, because he has been a great inspiration to me.

At the Heisman ceremony. Left to right:

Anna, Joey, John Jr., John Sr.

It was similar to the speech that Gale Sayers gave in New York in 1970, upon receiving the NFL's George S. Halas Most Courageous Player Award, named for the owner of his team, the Chicago Bears. Despite having led the League in rushing after surgery on both knees in 1969, Sayers dedicated the award to an even more courageous teammate, running back Brian Piccolo, who was dying of cancer.

Cappelletti's speech brought those big tough football men to tears. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, the famed "TV priest" of the 1950s, had been asked to deliver the ceremony's benediction. He told a national TV audience, "There is no need for a benediction. God has already blessed you with John Cappelletti." Between this, and the Italian ancestry of both player and head coach, the viewing audience could have been excused for thinking that, like Notre Dame, Penn State was a Catholic school, instead of a State school.

(I used to make that same mistake with Temple University, thinking it was either Catholic or Jewish. Villanova, St. Joseph's and La Salle are Catholic schools in or around Philadelphia, but Temple is not.)

Despite their undefeated record, being an independent meant that Penn State meant that they had no Conference Championship to play for, and they didn't play a single ranked team until their Thanksgiving Saturday matchup with arch-rival University of Pittsburgh, and even they were only ranked Number 20. Penn State won that game, but remained at Number 6. In Cappelletti's last college game, Penn State beat Louisiana State University (LSU) in the Orange Bowl, but stayed Number 6 in the last poll. For the 3rd time in the last 6 years, the Nittany Lions had gone undefeated for an entire season, and yet were denied the National Championship. Not until 1982 would they be awarded one.

Joey Cappelletti hung on until 1976, at the age of 13. In 1977, the film Something for Joey was made about the brothers.

John Cappelletti played for the Los Angeles Rams from 1974 to 1979, and the San Diego Chargers from 1980 to 1983. But, like so many Heisman winners, his professional career was a disappointment, in his case due to injuries. The Rams reached Super Bowl XIV in the 1979-80 season, but Cappelletti was unable to play in it.

He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame, the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame, the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame, and the Orange Bowl Hall of Honor. On September 7, 2013, at their home opener, Penn State honored their 1973 football team, and retired Cappelletti's Number 22. He remains the only Penn State athlete to have his number retired.

Cappelletti moved to Laguna Niguel, California, with his wife Betty and 4 sons. Betty's sister is the daughter of another Heisman Trophy winner, Alan Ameche, who won the Trophy with Wisconsin in 1954, and starred in the NFL for the Baltimore Colts.

UPDATE: In 2023, on the 50th Anniversary of the award and the speech, Cappelletti was interviewed. He said, "The speech gave me an opportunity to express some things I think on all our behalf’s. Just what we were feeling. I don’t think even I expected it to come out like that. It’s something you can’t really rehearse. It was just a feeling at the time, the feeling of all my family, not just myself."

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December 13, 1973 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. There were 2 games in the NBA. The Chicago Bulls beat the Milwaukee Bucks, 97-94 at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA. (It's now named the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.) And the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns, 119-108 at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

There were 2 games in the American Basketball Association. The San Antonio Spurs beat the Virginia Squires, 96-94 at the Scope in Norfolk, Virginia. And the San Diego Conquistadors beat the Memphis Tams, 107-104 at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

There were 4 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders lost to the Los Angeles Kings, 3-2 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* The Boston Bruins beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-2 at the Boston Garden.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the St. Louis Blues, 7-3 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

* And the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Atlanta Flames, 6-1 at The Omni in Atlanta.

And there was 1 game in the World Hockey Association: The Toronto Toros beat the Cleveland Crusaders, 3-1 at the Varsity Arena in Toronto.

December 10, 1935: The 1st Heisman Trophy Is Awarded

Jay Berwanger

December 10, 1935: The Heisman Trophy is awarded for the 1st time, to Jay Berwanger.

John Jacob Berwanger was born on March 19, 1914 in Dubuque, Iowa. Like every other football star of the era, he played both offense and defense, in the backfield in his case. Like baseball legend Honus Wagner, he was of German descent, but nicknamed "The Flying Dutchman."

In a 1934 game for the University of Chicago against Michigan, he collided with their center, and left him a permanent scar near his eye. That Michigan center was Gerald Ford, who later became the President of the United States. Both men ended up in the College Football Hall of Fame. In his senior year, 1935, he rushed for 577 yards, passed for 405, returned kickoffs for 359, scored 6 touchdowns, and kicked 5 points-after-touchdown. 

And yet, both seasons, the Chicago Maroons went only 4-4. This was part of a decline of a once-great program: In 1939, they went 2-6, closing on November 25 with a 46-0 home loss to Illinois. On December 22, the University of Chicago dropped its football program. It reinstated its program in 1969, on an NCAA Division III level, where they remain. The Big Ten Conference dropped to a Big Nine, until 1953, when they admitted Michigan State.

As a pre-television football star at a school that no longer plays at the top level, Berwanger probably would have been forgotten, if not for a vote made by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York. They decided to recognize "the most valuable college football player east of the Mississippi." The following year, the Club's athletic director, coaching legend John Heisman, died, and the award was renamed for him: The Heisman Memorial Trophy. It was also expanded to allow for the best player in the entire country.

The trophy, designed by sculptor Frank Eliscu, is modeled after Ed Smith, a leading player in 1934 for New York University (NYU). The two men were classmates at Manhattan's George Washington High School, and so, commissioned by the Downtown Athletic Club for a commissioned sculpture of a football player, he asked Smith to pose in his uniform.

Smith did not realize until 1982, when Sports Illustrated decided to have the model tracked down, that the sculpture for which he had posed had become the Heisman Trophy. The DAC presented Smith with a Heisman Trophy of his own in 1985, on its 50th Anniversary.

The trophy is made out of cast bronze, 13.5 inches tall, 14 inches long, 16 inches wide, and weighs 45 pounds. From its inception in 1935, the statue was cast by Dieges & Clust in New York, and later Providence, Rhode Island, until 1980, when Dieges and Clust was sold to Herff Jones. Since 2005, the trophy has been made by MTM Recognition in Del City, Oklahoma.

The 1st vote went to Berwanger, receiving 43 percent of the votes. For as long as the Trophy is awarded, he will be remembered as its 1st winner. It was awarded at the Downtown Athletic Club in Lower Manhattan from 1936 to 2000. The DAC's facilities were ruined as a result of the 9/11 attacks, and so the Yale Club took over hosting duties in 2001.

The DAC went out of business, and the Heisman Trust was created to award the Trophy and to do the other things that the DAC had done. The Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square hosted in 2002, '03 and '04. From 2005 to 2019, the ceremony was held across the street at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square. The COVID-19 epidemic prevented a full ceremony for 2020, and so the award was presented at the ESPN Studios in Bristol, Connecticut.  Since 2021, it has been held at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As the player of the year, Berwanger was an easy choice to be the 1st pick in the 1st-ever NFL Draft, the following February. He was chosen by the team with the previous season's worst record: The Philadelphia Eagles.

But the Eagles also made the 1st-ever puzzling Draft Day move: Team owners Bert Bell (later to be the Commissioner of the NFL) and Lud Wray had heard that Berwanger was going to demand $1,000 per game (NFL contracts were per game back then, not per season), and they didn't think they could afford that, so they traded Berwanger's rights to the Chicago Bears, in exchange for tackle Art Buss. Buss played 2 seasons for the Eagles, having already played 2 for the Bears, and this is the most interesting thing about him.

But at least the Eagles got something for Berwanger's rights. The Bears got nothing. At first, Berwanger chose not to sign for the Bears, or any team for that matter, because he wanted to maintain his amateur status, so that he could compete in the decathlon at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Certainly, a worthy goal, and one that Bears owner, general manager and head coach George Halas could respect. The Olympics would be in early August, and the Bears' 1st game wouldn't be until September 20. Halas could afford to bide his time.

But Berwanger didn't make the Olympic team, and the Gold Medal in the decathlon went to another American, Glenn Morris, who had also played football, at Colorado A&M University (which became Colorado State in 1958). So Berwanger went to Halas, and asked for $15,000 for the season -- which worked out to $1,250 a game, more than the Eagles thought he would demand.

Halas was known for his cheapness, but was willing to go as high as $13,500. Berwanger declined, and got a job with a Chicago-based rubber company, and also coached at the University of Chicago until it dropped its football program in 1940. He never played a down of professional football, and told an interviewer that he regretted not having accepted Halas' offer.

Ed Smith was chosen in the 3rd round of that 1st draft, by the Washington Redskins. He played for them in 1936, and for the Green Bay Packers in 1937. He later worked for the Otis Elevator Company, and lived until 1998. Trophy sculptor Frank Eliscu lived until 1996. Berwanger died after a lengthy battle with lung cancer, at his home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook, Illinois, on June 26, 2002, at the age of 88. 

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December 10, 1935 was a Tuesday. Football was in midweek. The NFL Championship Game was played the following Saturday: The Detroit Lions beat the New York Giants, 26-7 at the University of Detroit Stadium.

Baseball was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 2 games played in the NHL. The New York Americans beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 4-2 at the old Madison Square Garden. And the Boston Bruins beat the Montreal Maroons, 2-0 at the Boston Garden.