page_title: Eddie Mahan
section_title: All-American football player
hierarchical_section_title: Eddie Mahan / All-American football player
caption_attribution_description: English: Harvard fullback Eddie Mahan carries against Princeton in 1915
context_page_description: Edward William Mahan was an American football player. While playing halfback for Harvard, Mahan was selected as a first-team All-American three consecutive years from 1913 to 1915. He was widely regarded as one of the greatest football players in the first 50 years of the sport and was named by Jim Thorpe as the greatest football player of all time. In 1951, he was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame as part of the first group of inductees.
context_section_description: Mahan enrolled at Harvard in 1912 and played halfback for Harvard's varsity football team. Although he weighed only 165 pounds, Mahan played every minute of every football game for Harvard from 1913 to 1915.  Mahan was selected as a first-team All-American in each of those years, leading Harvard to a three-year record of 24–1–2.
  Mahan played his first varsity game for Harvard in 1913 against Maine and scored two touchdowns, including a 67-yard run.  And in the 1915 Harvard–Princeton game, he threw a pass for a 61-yard gain on a fake punt.
  As a senior and team captain in 1915, Mahan climaxed his college football career by scoring four touchdowns and kicking five extra points in a 41–0 win over Yale, the worst defeat in Yale's 44 years of college football to that time.  In the biography of Mahan at the College Football Hall of Fame, it is said that Mahan electrified the crowd in the 1915 Harvard-Yale game with "one of the greatest individual performances of the game's Pioneer Era."
  Harvard's sole loss during Mahan's three years on the team was a 10–0 loss to Cornell in 1915. After the game, Mahan apologized to Harvard coach Percy Haughton. Haughton reportedly responded, "Mahan, you are the greatest football player God ever made."
  Mahan later described his technique for evading tacklers as follows: "I simply give them the foot—right or left—and then take it away."
caption: Mahan carries against Princeton, 1915
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