Bruce Smith, the Heisman Trophy winner in 1941, was featured by
ESPN on Outside th
e Lines. Smith's acceptance speech for the award was broadcast just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. According to reports, Smith's speech "was disrupted when a squadron of American Army planes was mistaken for German bombers causing an air raid alert to be
signaled along the East Coast as he stepped to the podium." In September,
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has proclaimed “Bruce Smith Day” in Minnesota in honor of a one-time Heisman Trophy winner who will be celebrated at the University of Minnesota at Saturday’s home football game.
Sports Illustrated ran a great piece on Bruce Smith and what he meant to a youngster who grew up in Minnesota.
"We didn't have television in 1941, so this paragon existed visually for me only in blurry black-and-white newspaper photographs and in the wildly dramatic moving pictures that reeled through my mind on autumn Saturdays as I heard of his heroics via radio play-by-play. The Gophers wore golden helmets and golden uniforms in those days, and I visualized them vaguely as a swashbuckling crowd of shining trophy statuettes with Smith being by far the fastest, strongest, smartest—and shiniest—statuette of them all."
With Memorial Day coming up, it's best we remember Bruce Smith.
Bruce Smith, the Heisman Trophy winner in 1941, was featured by ESPN on Outside th
