His name was Amos Alonzo Stagg and he was born in 1862. Many football experts consider Stagg the most inventive coach in the history of football.
While still an undergraduate at Yale, Stagg invented the first tackling dummy. He merely hung a rolled-up mattress from the gymnasium ceiling, then placed another mattress underneath it. Later, as a coach, he devised the reverse play (Stagg called it “ends back”), the man-in-motion, the direct pass from the center, and other plays.
Stagg was the Knute Rockne of his day, because he instilled fighting spirit in his teams.
Stagg first began to coach football at Springfield (Massachusetts) College. Another faculty member then was James Naismith, who invented basketball. In 1890 Stagg became the football coach at the new University of Chicago. He remained there for 41 years. His teams won 254, lost 104, and tied 28.
At the age of 70, Stagg had to quit coaching because of Chicago’s retirement rule. He could have remained as an adviser at full salary, but Stagg liked to work with young people. He became head coach at the College of the Pacific for 14 years. Part of the time he had very few good players, because most of the young men were serving in the armed forces during World War II. Yet his Pacific teams won 59, lost 77 and tied 7.
Then the College of the Pacific asked him to retire because of his age. Again Stagg was offered an advisory job, but once more he refused. Stagg took a job at Susquehanna College, Pennsylvania, where his son, Alonzo, was head coach. The elder Stagg coached the offense. In 1951, Susquehanna enjoyed an undefeated season.
After that Stagg became the special kicking coach at Stockton Junior College in California. And finaly, in 1960, he had to retire. By then he was 98 years old. He died in 1965 at the age of 102.
Strangely enough, Amos Alonzo Stagg did not set out to become a football coach. He entered Yale hoping to become a minister. He liked athletics well enough–in fact he was offered a lot of money to pitch for New York of the National League. As a football payer, he was named to Walter Camp’s All-American team. And Stagg was a very poor speaker. He soon realized that he would have great difficulty delivering a sermon before an audience.
The church lost a good minister, but football gained an immortal coach.
From The Giant Book of More Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Alonzo_Stagg
Stagg was incredibly influential in football–just check out the list of football innovations he either developed, or was part of, on the Wikipedia page. Also, even though Naismith invented basketball, Stagg was the one to popularize the five-man team concept. He also played in the first ever public basketball game.
Did you see that Vandy has a woman on the roster tomorrow to be a kicker option? They’re super short-handed due to covid and they were like huh we got a women’s soccer team that just won the SEC tournament recently…. If she ends up playing, she will be the first woman to play in Power 5 conference game!
I saw the headline but didn’t read the story. Reminds me of a movie that I don’t t rightly remember.