Since 1935, every December the world turns its eyes to the city of New York for a ceremony to honor the nation's best college football player. The presentation of the Heisman Trophy has become one of the most important days on the college football calendar and one of the best ways to honor the game's best and most talented stars.

In the ceremony’s fourth year, a truly transcendent player was honored. Born on July 9, 1918, in Adel, Iowa, Nile Clark Kinnick Jr. seemed destined from birth for greatness. Showing athletic prowess from a very early age, he also played youth baseball on the same team as future Hall of Famer Bob Feller.  

At Adel High School, the quick and shifty Kinnick was a star on both the football and basketball teams. As a junior, he moved with his family to Omaha, Nebraska, where he earned All-State honors in both football and basketball. He attracted the attention of numerous college programs, but ultimately chose the University of Iowa, where he would eventually become a legend.

“With many of today’s major college football players entering the professional ranks long before completing one’s collegiate degree the term student-athlete is met with great skepticism,” said Kent Stephens, the Historian & Curator of the College Football Hall of Fame. “Some 80 years ago, Iowa’s Nike Kinnick set the standard as to what all student athletes should aspire.”

As a halfback, he excelled right off the bat for a struggling Hawkeyes team that went 1-7 his sophomore year. While the team scuffled, Kinnick did not. He earned the respect of his teammates, his coaches, and the Iowa community.

Kinnick continued to shine on both the gridiron (earning the nickname “The Cornbelt Comet”) and on the basketball court. He garnered All-Big Ten honors his junior year, despite playing on what proved to be a broken ankle. His senior season proved to be both his personal best and the best for the team. The team finished with a 6-1-1 record and was ranked ninth overall in the Associated Press final poll. That season, Kinnick rarely left the field, averaging 57 minutes a game. He would play 402 consecutive minutes overall before separating his shoulder in the Hawkeyes final game against Northwestern.

Kinnick was, for all intents and purposes, the Iowa offense during the 1939 season. He threw for 638 yards, 11 touchdowns and rushed for 374 yards on 106 carries. On special teams, he also made 11/17 dropkick conversion attempts, scoring 41 points. Kinnick was directly involved in 107 of Iowa’s 130 points throughout the year.

After the season, the accolades began to pour in. Kinnick would earn Big Ten MVP honors along with the Maxwell Award and the Walter Camp Memorial Trophy. He was also named the AP Male Athlete of the Year, beating out such legends as Joe DiMaggio, Byron Nelson, and Joe Louis. Of course, earned that season’s Heisman Trophy award.

At the 1939 awards banquet at the Downtown Athletic Club in New York, Kinnick gave what is regarded as one of the best speeches in the award’s history, reflecting on exactly what the award meant as well as what was transpiring all over the world in 1939. 

“I would like, if I may, to make a comment which I think is appropriate at this time. I thank God that I was born to the gridirons of the middle west and not to the battlefields of Europe. I can speak confidently and positively that the football players of this country would rather fight for the Heisman trophy than for the Croix de Guerre.”

Kinnick would be elected student body president of Iowa his senior year and decided to forego a career in professional football to pursue a law degree. However, after the United States entry into World War II, Kinnick again proved his selflessness, enlisting in the United States Navy and training to be a fighter pilot to serve his country.

“As a Heisman Trophy winning athlete, student body president and Phi Betta Kappa student, his greatness on the field, in his community and in the classroom are obvious,” said Stephens. “But his legacy superseded these accomplishments. Kinnick had a vision for both his own future and for that of his country and looked to realize his dreams through self-sacrifice of public and military service.”

Tragedy struck on June 2 in 1943, when Kinnick was flying a training mission off the coast of Venezuela. His Grumman F4F Wildcat developed a severe oil leak, one that prevented him from returning to land aboard the USS Lexington. Following standard procedure, Kinnick executed an emergency water landing, but sadly died in the process, his body never to be found. Kinnick was just one week away from his 25th birthday and was the first Heisman Trophy winner to die.

“In sports history we all like to speculate on the what ifs that occur through a bad bounce, a blown call or an untimely injury,” said Stephens. “All untimely instances that could have changed of outcomes and course of sports history. The tragic death of Nile Kinnick is college football’s ultimate what if. Not for our game but perhaps for our nation.”

Befitting of a figure so large on the American consciousness as he was, Kinnick’s legacy was cemented in numerous ways through numerous honors. When the U.S. occupied Japan at the close of the war, the site intended for the 1940 Summer Olympics was renamed Nile Kinnick Stadium. Similarly, a school for dependents of American military personnel in Yokosuka was name Nile C. Kinnick High School.

He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in the Hall’s inaugural year in 1951. At the start of every Big Ten football game, the coin used bears his image. Shortly after his death, a memorial fund was established at his alma mater; the Nile Kinnick Memorial Scholarship Fund is awarded annually to outstanding student-athletes at the school.

Iowa retired his number 24 and renamed the football stadium after him in 1972. To date, this is the only stadium named for a former Heisman Trophy and he is still the only winner in Iowa’s history.