Amos Alonzo Stagg

Amos Alonzo Stagg
Amos Alonzo Stagg, 1906
Title	Head Coach
Sport	Football
Born	August 16, 1862
Place of birth	West Orange, New Jersey
Died	February 17, 1965 (aged 102)
Place of death	Stockton, California
Career highlights
Overall	NCAA: 314-199-35 CFBDW: 329-190-35
Coaching stats
College Football DataWarehouse
Championships
1905 National Champions 1913 National Champions 1899 Big Ten Conference Championship 1905 Big Ten Conference Championship 1907 Big Ten Conference Championship 1908 Big Ten Conference Championship 1913 Big Ten Conference Championship 1922 Big Ten Conference Championship 1924 Big Ten Conference Championship 1936 NCAC Championship 1938 NCAC Championship 1940 NCAC Championship 1941 NCAC Championship 1942 NCAC Championship
Playing career
1885–1889	Yale
Position	End
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1890–1891 1890–1891 1892–1932 1933–1946	Williston Seminary Springfield College Chicago Pacific
College Football Hall of Fame, 1951 (Bio)

Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American collegiate coach in multiple sports, primarily football, and an overall athletic pioneer. He was born in West Orange, New Jersey, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy. Playing at Yale, where he was a divinity student, and a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity and the secret Skull and Bones society,^[1][2] he was an end on the first All-America team, selected in 1889.

Accomplishments

He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach in the charter class of 1951 and was the only individual honored in both areas until the 1990s. Influential in other sports, he developed basketball as a five-player sport and was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in its first group of inductees in 1959. A pitcher on his college baseball team, he declined an opportunity to play professional baseball but nonetheless influenced the game through his invention of the batting cage. He went on to earn an MPE from the Young Men's Christian Training School now know as Springfield College.

On March 11, 1892, Stagg, still an instructor at the YMCA School, played in the first public game of basketball at the Springfield (Mass.) YMCA. A crowd of 200 watched as the student team crushed the faculty, 5-1. Stagg scored the only basket for the losing side.

Coaching career

Stagg became the first paid football coach at Williston Seminary, a secondary school, in 1890. This was also Stagg's first time receiving pay to coach football. He would coach there one day a week while also coaching full time at Springfield College. He moved on to coach at the University of Chicago (1892-1932), and the College of the Pacific (1932-46), after he was forced to retire from Chicago at the age of 70. During his career, he developed numerous basic tactics for the game (including the man in motion and the lateral pass), as well as some equipment. Stagg played himself in the movie Knute Rockne, All American released in 1940. From 1947 to 1952 he served as a co-head coach with his son at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. In 1924, he served as a coach with the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team in Paris. Known as the "grand old man" of college football, Stagg died in Stockton, California, at 102 years old.

Legacy

In 1952, Barbara Stagg, Amos' granddaughter, started coaching the high school girls basketball team for Slatington High School in Slatington, Pennsylvania. Two high schools in the United States - one in Palos Hills, Illinois, and the other in Stockton, California - and an elementary school in Chicago, Illinois, are named after him. The NCAA Division III national football championship game, played in Salem, Virginia, is named after him. The athletic stadium at Springfield College is named Stagg Field. The football field at Susquehanna University is named Amos Alonzo Stagg Field in honor of both Stagg Sr. and Jr. And he was the namesake of the University of Chicago's old Stagg Field where, on December 2, 1942, a team of Manhattan Project scientists led by Enrico Fermi created the world's first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction under the west stands of the abandoned stadium, as well as Stagg Memorial Stadium, Pacific's football and soccer stadium. Phillips Exeter also has a field named for him and a statue. A field in West Orange, New Jersey on Saint Cloud Avenue is also named from him.^[3]

The Amos Alonzo Stagg Collection is held at the University of the Pacific Library, Holt Atherton Department of Special Collections.

The Amos Alonzo Stagg 50-mile Endurance Hike is held annually along the C&O canal outside Potomac, MD.

Innovations in football

• names on uniforms
• lateral pass
• man in motion
• numbering plays and playing
• tackling dummy
• helmets
• Statue of Liberty play

Career record

References

1. ^ Alexandra Robbins, Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power, Little, Brown and Company, 2002, page 126
2. ^ Robin Lester,He also received a MPE from (Young Men's Christian Training School now know as (Springfield College)in 1891 Stagg's University: The Rise, Decline, and Fall of Big-time Football at Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1995, page 9.
3. ^ West Orange Recreation

External links

• Amos Alonzo Stagg Fund
• Chicago Amos Alonzo Stagg profile
• College Football Hall of Fame - biography as coach
• College Football Hall of Fame - biographer as player
• Basketball Hall of Fame
• Stagg Bowl - Division III
• The Manuscripts and Archives Digital Images Database (Madrid)
• Amos Alonzo Stagg at Find a Grave
• http://athletics.uchicago.edu/football/fb-recordbook-early-coaching.pdf