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Amos Alonzo Stagg

Stagg in 1906
Sport(s)	Football, basketball, baseball, track
Biographical details
Born	(1862-08-16)August 16, 1862 West Orange, New Jersey
Died	March 17, 1965(1965-03-17) (aged 102) Stockton, California
Playing career
Football
1885–1889	Yale
1892	Chicago
Position(s)	End, halfback
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
Football
1890–1891	Williston Seminary (MA)
1890–1891	YMCA (MA)
1892–1932	Chicago
1933–1946	Pacific (CA)
1947–1952	Susquehanna (associate HC)
1953–1958	Stockton College (ST)
Basketball
1920–1921	Chicago
Baseball
1893–1905	Chicago
1907–1913	Chicago
Track
1896–1913	Chicago
1914–1928	Chicago
Administrative career (AD unless noted)
1892–1933	Chicago
Head coaching record
Overall	314–199–35 (college football) 14–6 (basketball) 266–158–3 (baseball)
Bowls	0–1
Accomplishments and honors
Championships
Football 2 National (1905, 1913) 7 Western / Big Ten (1899, 1905, 1907–1908, 1913, 1922, 1924) 5 NCAC (1936, 1938, 1940–1942)
Awards
Football All-American, 1889 AFCA Coach of the Year (1943)
College Football Hall of Fame Inducted in 1951 (profile)
Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 1959 (profile)

Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He served as the head football coach at the International Young Men's Christian Association Training School (now called Springfield College) (1890–1891), the University of Chicago (1892–1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933–1946), compiling a career college football record of 314–199–35. His Chicago Maroons teams of 1905 and 1913 have been recognized as national champions. He was also the head basketball coach for one season at the University of Chicago (1920–1921), and the head baseball coach there for 19 seasons (1893–1905, 1907–1913).

At the University of Chicago, Stagg also instituted an annual prep basketball tournament and track meet. Both drew the top high school teams and athletes from around the United States.

Stagg played football as an end at Yale University and was selected to the first College Football All-America Team in 1889. He was inducted into 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 roles until the 1990s. Influential in other sports, Stagg developed basketball as a five-player sport. This five-man concept allowed his 10 (later 11) man football team the ability to compete with each other and to stay in shape over the winter. Stagg was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in its first group of inductees in 1959.

Stagg also forged a bond between sports and religious faith early in his career that remained important to him for the rest of his life.^[1]

Early years

Stagg was born in a poor Irish neighborhood of West Orange, New Jersey, and matriculated at Phillips Exeter Academy.^[2][3]

Yale

Stagg attended Yale College, where he was a divinity student, and a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity.^[4]

Baseball

He played as a pitcher on his college baseball team; he declined an opportunity to play for six different professional baseball teams.^[2] He nonetheless influenced the game through his invention of the batting cage.^[5]

Stagg (far left) on Yale's 1888 team

Football

Stagg played on the 1888 team. He was an end on the first All-America team, selected in 1889.

Springfield

He later abandoned the theology career and received a MPE from Young Men's Christian Training School (now known as Springfield College) in 1891.^[6]

Basketball

On March 11, 1892, Stagg, still an instructor at the YMCA School, played in the first public game of basketball at the Springfield YMCA. A crowd of 200 watched as the student team beat the faculty, 5–1. Stagg scored the only basket for the losing side. He popularized basketball teams having five players.^[7]

Coaching career

Stagg in 1899

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.^[8] Stagg then coached at the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1932. Eventually, university president Robert Maynard Hutchins forced out the septuagenarian Stagg, who he felt was too old to continue coaching.^[9][10]

At age 70, Stagg moved on to the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where he coached from 1933 to 1946. In 1946 Stagg was asked to resign as football coach at Pacific.^[11]

In the 1924 Summer Olympics, he served as a coach with the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team in Paris. Stagg played himself in the movie Knute Rockne, All American released in 1940. From 1947 to 1952 he served as co-coach with his son, Amos Jr., at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. Stagg's final job was as kicking coach at the local junior college in Stockton, California, which was then known as Stockton College. "The Grand Old Man of Football" retired from Stockton College at the age of 96 and later died in Stockton, California, at 102 years old.^[12] 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.

Family

Stagg was married to the former Stella Robertson on September 10, 1894. The couple had three children: two sons, Amos Jr. and Paul, and a daughter, Ruth. Both sons played for the elder Stagg as quarterbacks at the University of Chicago and each later coached college football. In 1952, Barbara Stagg, Amos' granddaughter, started coaching the high school girls' basketball team for Slatington High School in Slatington, Pennsylvania.

Legacy

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 Stagg.^[13][14][15] The NCAA Division III National Football Championship game, played in Salem, Virginia, is named the Stagg Bowl after him.^[5] The athletic stadium at Springfield College is named Stagg Field.^[16] The football field at Susquehanna University is named Amos Alonzo Stagg Field in honor of both Stagg Sr. and Jr.^[17] Stagg 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.^[18] At University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, one of the campus streets is known as Stagg Way and Pacific Memorial Stadium, the school's football and soccer stadium, was renamed Amos Alonzo Stagg Memorial Stadium on October 15, 1988.^[19] Phillips Exeter Academy also has a field named for him and a statue.^[20] A field in West Orange, New Jersey on Saint Cloud Avenue is also named for him.^[21] The Amos Alonzo Stagg Award is awarded to the "individual, group or institution whose services have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football."^[22] The winner of the Big Ten Football Championship Game, started in 2011, receives the Stagg Championship Trophy, named in his honor.^[23]

At the College of William and Mary, the Amos Alonzo Stagg Society was organized during 1979–1980 by students and faculty opposed to a plan by the institution’s Board of Visitors to move William and Mary back into big-time college football several decades after a scandal there involving grade changes for football players. The Society was loosely organized, but successful in combating, among other plans, a major expansion of the William and Mary football stadium.

Collections of Amos Alonzo Stagg's papers are held at the University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center and at the University of the Pacific Library, Holt Atherton Department of Special Collections.^[24][25] The Alonzo Stagg 50/20 Hike goes through Arlington, Virginia, Washington, DC and Maryland.^[26]

The Stagg Tree, a giant sequoia in the Alder Creek Grove and the fifth largest tree in the world, is named in honor of Amos Alonzo Stagg.

Stagg Bowl

The Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl, otherwise known as the NCAA Division III Football Championship Game since 1973, is competed annually as the final game of the NCAA Division III Football Tournament. The Stagg Bowl can be traced back to 1969, prior to the inception of the D-III national championship. At that time—from 1969 to 1973—the Stagg Bowl was one of two bowls competed at the College Division level—the Knute Rockne Bowl and the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. In 1973, the NCAA instituted the D-III national championship, and the Stagg Bowl was adopted as the moniker for that game.

The first 10 Stagg Bowls were played in Phenix City, Alabama, from 1973 to 1982. Wittenberg University (Ohio) won the inaugural game via a 41–0 result over Juniata College (Pa.). The game moved to Kings Island, Ohio, for the 1983 and 1984 editions, with Augustana College (Ill.) winning the first two of its four straight NCAA titles.

The Stagg Bowl returned to Phenix City for five more years, before spending three seasons in Bradenton, Florida.

In 1993, the Stagg Bowl moved to Salem, Va., where it has been competed each year since (20 games after the 2012 championship). The University of Mount Union (formerly Mount Union College) won the first of its NCAA Division III-record 12 football national championships in 1993.^[27]

Invention

Stagg invented the end-around play (diagram pictured), and published the first book with plays diagrammed

The following is a list of innovations Stagg introduced to American football. Where known, the year of its first use is annotated in parentheses. Stagg is noted as a 'contributor' if he was one of a group of individuals responsible for a given innovation.

• Ends-back formation (1890)^[28]
  


• 
  Reverse play (1890)^[22][28]
  


• 
  7–2–2 defense (1890)^[29]
  


• First indoor game (1891)^[28]
  


• First book on football with diagrams (1893; with Minnesota's Henry Williams)^[28]
  


• First intersectional game (1894)^[28]
  


• 
  center snap (1894; John Heisman and Walter Camp claimed to have invented it in 1893)^[30]
  


• 
  onside kick (1894; possibly contributor)^[30][31]
  


• 
  huddle (1896)^[5][28]
  


• 
  quick kick (1896)^[30]
  


• 
  Short punt (1896)^[32]
  


• Spiral snap (1896; contributor alongside Walter Camp, George Washington Woodruff and Germany Schulz)^[30][33]
  


• line shift (1897)^[31]
  


• 
  placement kick (1897; Stagg believed Princeton used it earlier)^[30]
  


• 
  lateral pass (1898)^[5]
  


• tackling dummy (1899)^[5][34]
  


• 
  unbalanced line (1900)^[31]
  


• 
  Notre Dame Box (1905)^[32]
  


• 
  varsity letters (1906)^[5]
  


• 
  Statue of Liberty play (1908)^[35]
  


• 
  uniform numbers (1913)^[5]
  


• 
  T formation (contributor)^[36]
  


• 
  forward pass (contributor alongside Eddie Cochems and Walter Camp)^[30]
  


• 
  man in motion^[5][31]
  


• sleeper play^[31]
  


• 
  quarterback keeper^[36]
  


• delayed buck^[37]
  


• 
  linebacker position^[37]
  


• 
  hip pads^[37]
  


• numerical designation of plays^[5]
  


• 
  padded goalposts^[5]
  


• 
  end-around^[5]
  

Head coaching record

College football

College basketball

See also

• List of college football coaches with 200 wins


• List of college football coaches with 100 losses


• List of college football coaches with 20 ties


• List of college football coaches who coached games in stadiums named after themselves

References

Books

• 
  Considine, Bob (1962). The unreconstructed amateur: a pictorial biography of Amos Alonzo Stagg. Amos Alonzo Stagg Foundation.
  


• 
  Danzig, Allison (1956). The History of American Football: Its Great Teams, Players, and Coaches. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  


• 
  Davis, Jeff (2006). Papa Bear. McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 0-07-147741-1.
  


• 
  Lester, Robin (1995). Stagg's University: The Rise, Decline, and Fall of Big-time Football at Chicago. University of Illinois Press.
  


• 
  Otto, J. R. (1969). Football. Taylor & Francis.
  


• 
  Perrin, Tom (1987). Football: A College History. McFarland.
  


• 
  Pope, Edwin. Football's Greatest Coaches.
  


• 
  Robbins, Alexandra (2002). Secrets of the Tomb: Skull and Bones, the Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power. Little, Brown and Company.
  


• 
  Stagg, Amos Alonzo (1927). Touchdown!: As told by Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg to Wesley Winans Stout. Longmans, Green and Co.
  


• 
  Whittingham, Richard (2001). Rites of Autumn. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0743222199.
  


• 
  Wulf, Steve (2009). The Mighty Book of Sports Knowledge. Random House, Inc.
  

External links

• University of Chicago profile


• 
  Amos Alonzo Stagg (coach) at the College Football Hall of Fame
  


• 
  Amos Alonzo Stagg (player) at the College Football Hall of Fame
  


• 
  Amos Alonzo Stagg at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame
  


• 
  Amos Alonzo Stagg on IMDb