Gentlemen, it is better to have died as a small boy than to fumble this football.

Heisman eventually also coached basketball and track became the head of the Atlanta Baseball Association and the athletic director of the Atlanta Athletic Club. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1954. Voters for this award consist primarily of media representatives who are allocated by regions across the country in order to filter out possible regional bias and former recipients.

The Heisman Trophy awarded annually to the season's most outstanding college football player is named after him. Heisman was also the head basketball coach at Georgia Tech (1908–1909 1912–1914) tallying a mark of 9–14 and the head baseball coach at Buchtel (1894) Clemson (1899–1904) and Georgia Tech (1904–1917) amassing a career college baseball record of 219–119–7.