Wallace Wade

Wallace Wade
Title	Head coach
Sport	Football, basketball, baseball
Born	June 15, 1892(1892-06-15)
Place of birth	Trenton, Tennessee
Died	October 7, 1986 (aged 94)
Place of death	Durham, North Carolina
Career highlights
Overall	171-49-10
Bowls	2-2-1
Coaching stats
College Football DataWarehouse
Championships
3 National (1925-1926, 1930) 10 SoCon (1924-1926, 1930, 1933, 1935-1936, 1938-1939, 1941)
Playing career
1914-1916	Brown
Position	Guard
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1923-1930 1931-1941 1946-1950	Alabama Duke Duke
College Football Hall of Fame, 1955 (Bio)

William Wallace Wade (June 15, 1892–October 7, 1986) was an American collegiate athletics coach, primarily football in addition to baseball and basketball. He was born in Trenton, Tennessee.

Playing career

Wade played football at Brown University. One of his teammates at Brown was Fritz Pollard, who went on to become the first African American coach in the National Football League.

Coaching career

After working as an assistant coach for Vanderbilt University's football program, Wade was hired as the head coach at the University of Alabama in 1923. Over the next seven years, Wade's team won three national championships after appearing in the Rose Bowl in 1925, 1926, and 1930.

Following his third national championship, Wade shocked the college football world by moving to Duke University, which had less of a football tradition than Alabama. Though Wade refused to answer questions regarding his decision to leave Alabama for Duke until late in his life, he eventually told a sports historian he believed his philosophy regarding sports and athletics fit perfectly with the philosophy of the Duke administration and that he felt being at a private institution would allow him greater freedom.

Wade continued to succeed at Duke, most notably in 1938, when his "Iron Dukes" went unscored upon until reaching the 1939 Rose Bowl, where they lost 7-3 to the Southern California in Duke's first Rose Bowl appearance. Wade's Blue Devils lost the 1942 Rose Bowl to Oregon State. The game was held at Duke Stadium, the Blue Devils' home stadium in Durham, North Carolina, because the recent attack on Pearl Harbor made the event's organizers skittish of hosting the game in California. Wade entered military service after the Rose Bowl loss and the legendary Eddie Cameron filled in for him as head football coach from 1942 to 1945. Wade returned to coach the Blue Devils in 1946 and continued until his retirement in 1950. In 16 seasons, Wade's Duke teams compiled a record of 110 wins, 36 losses, and 7 ties.

Later life and honors

From 1951 to 1960 Wade was the commissioner of the Southern Conference. He was inducted College Football Hall of Fame in 1955. In 1967, Duke's football stadium was renamed Wallace Wade Stadium in his honor. Wade died in 1986 in Durham at the age of 94. In 2006, a bronze statue of Wade was erected outside of the University of Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium alongside the statues of Frank Thomas, Bear Bryant, and Gene Stallings, the other head coaches who led Alabama to national championships.

Head coaching record

References

External links

• College Football Hall of Fame Entry
• Duke University Biography
• Frenzy in Atlanta