Jim Thorpe and the Dropkicking Heisman Trophy Winners

I came across a 19-minute movie from 1932 called Always Kicking. It’s a terrible movie with a plot line about an uncle who intervenes so his nephew can become his college team’s kicker. As it happens, Jim Thorpe attends the team’s practice one day and twice demonstrates how to dropkick the ball. Now, there may be film of Thorpe dropkicking during his NFL days, though I haven’t found any, so if you’ve never heard Jim Thorpe’s voice or seen him dropkicking the ball, watch the one-minute-and-fifteen-second clip I pulled from the movie.

Dropkicking was fading fast when Thorpe appeared in the film. Advances in snapping and placekicking, and rule changes that made the ball narrower and pointier in 1929 and 1934, made dropkicking a dying art. Nevertheless, a few practitioners existed during the 1930s and early 1940s before it mostly disappeared.

Nearly any search about dropkicking nowadays brings up Doug Flutie’s dropkicked conversion in a New Year’s Eve 2017 game when he played for New England.

While Flutie’s dropkick came while playing in the NFL, it led me to ask whether any other Heisman Trophy winners successfully dropkicked in a college or NFL game. As it turns out, there were was more than one.

Through the 1940s, quarterbacks and running backs commonly kicked PATs, and among the era’s Heisman Trophy winners, some handled them on a full- or part-time basis, though most placekicked.

• 1938: Davy O’Brien | placekicked field goals and PATs

• 1940: Tom Harmon | placekicked field goals and PATs

• 1942: Frank Sinkwich | placekicked PATs in NFL

• 1943: Angelo Bertelli | placekicked PATs

• 1945: Doc Blanchard | placekicked 1 PAT in 1945 season

• 1948: Doak Walker | placekicked PATs and field goals in college and the NFL

• 1950: Vic Janowicz | placekicked PATs and field goals, including OSU record of 10 PATs in one game

Other early Heisman winners did not kick at all, while two winners are known to have scored by dropkick.

Iowa’s Niles Kinnick dropkicked 11 of 17 PAT attempts during the 1939 season. One came in their game versus Minnesota.

(‘Play-By-Play Of Iowa-Minnesota Game,’ Des Moines Register, November 19, 1939.)

Two years later, Minnesota’s Bruce Smith won the Heisman Trophy. Although Minnesota generally subbed him out when attempting field goals and PATs, he dropkicked two PATs early in the 1940 season against Washington.

As seen above, box scores of the era often indicated whether field goals and PATs were made by dropkick of placement. (Seattle Daily Times, September 29, 1940.)

So, despite the demise of the dropkick, it hung around long enough that the fifth and seventh Heisman winners dropkicked the ball over the crossbar during their college days. Let me know if you find another one.

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