When members of the Downtown Athletic Club decided in 1934 to award a trophy to the best college football player east of the Mississippi, they didn't want just any old cup or bowl. So they commissioned a young sculptor named Frank Eliscu to create a statue of a football player. Eliscu, who was paid $500 for the work, asked an old high school friend, NYU running back Ed Smith, to pose for him. A clay model of a football player in a running position was then taken uptown to Fordham, where coach Jim Crowley, one of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen and a member of the DAC Trophy Committee, had some of his players assume the pose for the sake of verisimilitude.

Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago won the DAC Trophy in 1935. In 1936, upon the death of legendary coach and DAC Athletic Director John W. Heisman, it was renamed the Heisman Trophy. (The first to employ the word "hike" as the signal to snap the ball, Heisman also set the standard for running up the score; it was his Georgia Tech team that beat Cumberland 222-0 because Cumberland had beaten his Tech baseball team badly the previous spring.) Eventually, the territory for the eligible recipient was expanded beyond the Mississippi.

Cut to the fall of 1982. Filmmaker Bud Greenspan was producing the Heisman Trophy telecast, and he asked publicist Joe Goldstein if he could track down the model for the Heisman so that they could invite him to the dinner. Goldstein learned that it was Smith and tracked him down through Smith's brother-in-law, Bob Pastor, a former heavyweight who had lost twice to Joe Louis.

When Goldstein got Smith on the phone, he greeted him with, "So, you're the guy who modeled for the Heisman Trophy?"

Smith had no idea what Goldstein was talking about. "Didn't you play football at NYU?" Goldstein asked. Yes, said Smith. "Did you know the sculptor Frank Eliscu?" Yes, said Smith, he was a high school classmate. "Did you ever pose in a football uniform for him?" Yes, as a matter of fact, he had. "Have you ever seen the Heisman Trophy?" Sure, said Smith. Who hadn't?

It was then -- 48 years later -- that Smith realized he had been the model for the Heisman.

Smith, who played pro football for the Boston Redskins and Green Bay Packers and later worked for Otis Elevators, passed away in 1998. But not before he was given his own Heisman Trophy as a remembrance.

Click here to see Jim Crowley checking the statue for flaws.