'Mr. Outside' was golden inside: I'll trade you the '46 Heisman for that little one in the corner!

Sporting News, The, March 25, 2005 by Dave Kindred

One morning eight or nine years ago, schoolteacher Dan Harden saw a little old man and a woman walking onto the campus of Bonita High School in La Verne, Calif.

"They were just looking around, like taking in a new place," Harden said.

Only thing unusual was that the old man had a trophy under his arm.

Big ol' trophy.

He came into the school and said to Harden, "Well, I have something for the school, and I'd like to leave it here."

Then a government/economics teacher, Harden had been a football coach and Bonita High's athletic director. Also, he had not fallen off the turnip truck yesterday. So he knew what that something was under the old man's arm, what that big ol' trophy was.

The Heisman Trophy.

The old man was Glenn Davis.

Glenn Davis, a magic name in college football history.

He was the elusive "Mr. Outside" to fullback Felix "Doc" Blanchard's "Mr. Inside" on the greatest Army teams. The Cadets were undefeated national champions in 1944 and 1945 and undefeated with a tie in 1946, the year Davis won the Heisman. In those Davis-Blanchard years, Army went 27-0-1.

Five feet 9 and 170 pounds, Davis was a halfback with world-class speed. He once finished a game, jumped into a car, shucked his football gear for a track suit, borrowed spiked shoes and alit at the blocks to run the 100 in 9.7 seconds. One season at West Point, he carried 82 times for 944 yards, an 11.5-yard average. His three-season average of 8.3 yards a carry remains a major-college record.

He still was in a hurry eight, nine years ago. "Glenn just wanted to leave the Heisman and go," says Dan Harden. "He said he didn't want any publicity, for us not to call the newspapers."

Recruiting being what it was in the 1940s--nothing--a professor of dramatics at Dartmouth sent a note to the famous Army coach Red Blaik: "Everybody in California talks about a football player at Bonita High School.... They say this kid is the fastest halfback ever seen out there. He's an all-around athlete; baseball, basketball and track as well as football. I thought you might be interested in knowing about this boy. His name is Glenn Davis."

Davis was a 13-letter man at Bonita and thought he owed the school thanks. "That's why he brought the trophy over," says Joe Deal, a childhood buddy of Davis' and later the Bonita principal. "Just a great fella and a great athlete. And not just football, that stuff. Tennis, swimming, fishing."

On Blaik's teams during World War II, Davis was as bright a star as had ever shone in the college firmament. Sportswriter Ed Linn wrote that Davis "lived a Spartan life by choice. He trained religiously, kept himself in perfect shape, never drank or smoked. When he came back to coach the JVs, a cigarette company wanted to buy his testimonial. Glenn refused because he was afraid he might disillusion the boys who took him for a model."

Shortly after graduation from the academy, Davis needed surgery for a knee injury suffered while making a movie, The Spirit of West Point. He fulfilled his three-year military commitment before trying the NFL. But with the repaired knee, he was never the runner he had been. In two seasons with the Rams, he carried 152 times for 616 yards, a 4.1-yard average. He retired to a job in the special events department of the Los Angeles Times, where he worked for 33 years.

Given today's memorabilia market, what's a Heisman Trophy worth?

Larry Kelley, a Yale University legend and the 1936 winner, put his trophy up for auction. It brought $328,110, a figure that caused Kelley to say, "I'm still in a state of shock." The idea was to leave an estate for his wife and 18 nieces and nephews.

Paul Hornung sold his 1956 Heisman for $250,000. The idea was to create scholarships at Notre Dame for students from his hometown, Louisville, Ky.

Then, of course, there's the noble Orenthal James Simpson, who sold his 1968 Heisman for $230,000. The idea was to pay down the $33.5 million he owed in a legal judgment for the deaths of his ex-wife Nicole and Ron Goldman.

And what did Glenn Davis get?

The teacher Dan Harden says, "There was a nondescript trophy in the trophy case that said like 'Downtown Business Community,' something you'd get a long time ago for volleyball or basketball. Glenn saw it in the trophy case and said, 'That's mine!' Could I have it?' "

So today the 1946 Heisman Trophy sits in the main lobby of Bonita High School. And Glenn Davis took home the littlest trophy in the place. He died March 9. He was 80 years old.