Beginning in the late 1890s, Heisman helped spread the growth of the game like a coaching Johnny Appleseed through jobs in Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas. A tireless innovator, Heisman, promoting the forward pass, divided the game into quarters and, in 1898, came up with “hike” as a way for an entire team to know when the ball would be snapped into the backfield.

Before then, backs used silent gestures to begin plays. Heisman, a part-time stage actor who had been trained as a lawyer, prized gifted oratory and preferred a dynamic sound that would spring his charges into action. Hike fit the bill and also aptly described what was happening: a ball hiked backward from the ground.

Quarterbacks nationwide dutifully summoned the ball with a resolute “hike” for most of the first half of the 20th century.

In time, however, like so many things in football — where there is too much time to think between game weekends — the unadorned hike became increasingly complicated.

Again, Heisman played a part. Another of his innovations was a sudden shift of backfield players before the snap, which allowed Heisman’s teams to overload one side of a formation. To augment the advantage, an element of deception was added, with code words used to signal the shift.

Then, as the forward pass became a bigger part of football in the 1910s, concealing the offense’s play call became a major imperative. Some teams even approached the line of scrimmage knowing they might change the play called in the huddle before the ball was snapped. This required much more than a single, shouted ‘‘hike.’’ Additional coded signals were soon developed, a system now known as an audible.

A century of football evolution later, quarterbacks throughout college and the N.F.L. regularly call plays not in the huddle, but as they wait at the line of scrimmage. Fans watching at home hear a host of seemingly disconnected terms and words, even the names of cities — who can forget Peyton Manning’s “Omaha!” — and animals.