Today's Tidbit... John Heisman and the Seamless Valve
John Heisman was an intelligent guy who coached most of his games before commercial radio, so most of what he had to say was captured in print. He was a prolific writer, publishing syndicated commentaries on many football topics. Writing for newspaper audiences enhanced his stature and put money in his pockets.
Heisman was responsible for multiple football innovations, though he appears to have taken credit for specific innovations that did not originate with him. He also had his share of ideas that never gained acceptance. For example, while coaching Penn in 1921, Heisman advocated for keeping light men, those weighing 125 pounds, from playing against heavy men, those who weighed 200 pounds. How he planned to institute his idea is unclear since every newspaper report on the topic amounted to little more than a blurb.
That particular idea never went anywhere, but others did. Heisman was the first coach to have his center lift the ball from the ground and pass it back to the quarterback. Until then, centers snapped the ball by rolling it on the ground on the ball's side, just as they had rolled it on the side when centers still snapped with their feet.
Also, Heisman, not Pop Warner, originated the hidden ball trick when he coached Auburn in 1895. Heisman was also an early advocate of the forward pass, so he got that one right.
Another innovation that Heisman helped along, despite it not being his idea, was the use of seamless valves to inflate footballs. Understanding the importance of this step requires a review of how footballs and other inflated sports balls were constructed and inflated before the 1920s.
Early footballs were inflated pig bladders tied off with string or by tying the bladder stem-like one ties a balloon. Later, they encased the bladders in leather (cowhide, sheepskin, or pigskin) to increase the ball's durability and continued tying the bladder as before.
Walter Camp and Lorin F. Deland described the process of inflating a football in an 1896 article as follows:
The ball is a rubber bladder, inclosed within a sack of pigskin; by means of a pump, the bladder is inflated with air up to the limit where it completely fills the pigskin sack, and when the pressure reaches a high point, the mouth of the bladder is securely tied, the pigskin tightly laced, and the ball is ready for use. It is then practically as a hard as a block of wood, yet of almost no appreciable weight.
Camp, Walter and Lorin F. Deland, 'Scientific Football,'Â Buffalo Courier Express, October 4, 1896.
Even after pigskin bladders were replaced by rubber bladders beginning in the 1860s, the bladders leaked, and the balls became deflated. Reinflating the ball required unlacing it, replacing or reinflating the bladder, and lacing it again. This time-consuming task allowed for human error and the deliberate use of underinflated balls when facing teams with better punters and kickers than yours.
Inconsistent inflation levels remained a thing when John Heisman started his one-year coaching stint at Washington & Jefferson in 1923. At the time, he also had a side hustle as the representative for a sporting goods manufacturer, so he leveraged his stature in the football world to present a new football design to the NCAA's rules committee for approval. The ball had a valve that sat flush with its surface, allowing it to be inflated without taking the ball apart. The valve, which sat opposite the laces for better balance, was described by Camp as:
The valve is a rubber disc set into the bladder but all that appears upon the outside of the ball after the inflation has been complete is small half-inch black disc.
Camp, Walter, 'Has New Method Of Inflating Ball,' Jersey Observer and Jersey Journal (Jersey City, NJ), March 21, 1923.
The committee did not approve the ball during that meeting, though the rules did not prohibit its use, provided the ball met the other specs. Multiple sporting goods manufacturers introduced seamless footballs over the next several years, and it was at that point, football diverged from other inflated sports balls. The laces were a necessary evil on footballs until the forward pass and the overhand spiral changed the laces into a functional feature. The laces did not serve a purpose in basketball, soccer, volleyball, and rugby, so manufacturers eliminated the laces from those balls during the 1920s. They continued offering and selling laced balls due to customer preferences and their lower prices, but laced balls ultimately disappeared from those sports.Â
Football retained the laces while also adopting the seamless valve. The cowhide laces were flexible, like those used on today's baseball gloves, and barely rose above the ball's surface. Using valves meant the laces no longer needed the flexibility to be laced and unlaced, so they became stiffer and rose further above the ball's surface, allowing for tighter spirals, longer throws, and greater accuracy.
So, the next time you see a beautiful downfield pass, thank the guy who invented the seamless valve and John Heisman for his small role in advancing the technology.
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I learned of sprint football late last year, which is in the same spirit as Heisman's proposal.