Amos Alonzo Stagg

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Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox college coach Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football.<ref name=snwug>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=alafiscf>Template:Cite news</ref> He served as the head football coach at the International YMCA 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 Template:Winpct. His undefeated Chicago Maroons teams of 1905 and 1913 were recognized as national champions. He was also the head basketball coach for one season at Chicago (1920–1921), and the Maroons' head baseball coach for twenty seasons (1893–1905, 1907–1913).

At 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 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, and was elected Fellow #71 in the National Academy of Kinesiology (formerly American Academy of Physical Education) in 1946.<ref name="The National Academy of Kinesiology">Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early years

Stagg was born in a poor Irish neighborhood of West Orange, New Jersey, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy.<ref name=pope236>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Yale

File:Yale1888.jpg
Stagg (far left) on Yale's 1888 team

Stagg entered Yale University in 1884 and received his bachelor's degree in 1888. He spent two additional years at Yale studying in the Divinity School under William Rainey Harper before deciding he could have more influence on young men through coaching than through the pulpit. He was very active in the Yale YMCA where he served as general secretary during his last two years.

Baseball

Stagg was a pitcher at Yale; he declined the offers to play for six different professional baseball teams.<ref name="pope236"/> He nonetheless influenced the game through his invention of the batting cage.<ref name="wulf"/>

Football

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

Springfield

Stagg later gave up his desire for the ministry and decided to become a coach and athletic director. He spent two years at the International YMCA Training School, now known as Springfield College, from 1890 to 1892.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Basketball

Basketball had been invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a teacher at the YMCA School in Springfield. On March 11, 1892, Stagg, still an instructor at the YMCA School, played in the first public game of basketball. A crowd of 200 watched as the student team defeated the faculty, 5–1. Stagg scored the only basket for the losing side. He popularized the five-player lineup on basketball teams.<ref>Amos Alonzo Stagg Template:Webarchive</ref>

Coaching career

File:AAStagg-1906.jpg
Stagg in 1906.

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 coached there one day a week while also coaching full-time at the International YMCA Training School.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Stagg then coached at the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1932.<ref name=siflofb>Template:Cite news</ref> He was the head football coach and director of the Department of Physical Culture.<ref name="Shprintzen 2013">Shprintzen, Adam D. (2013). The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817-1921. University of North Carolina Press. p. 199. Template:ISBN</ref> Eventually, university president Robert Maynard Hutchins forced out the 70-year-old Stagg, feeling that he was too old to continue coaching.<ref name=papabear>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

At age 70, Stagg moved on to the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California,<ref name=siflofb/> where he led the Tigers for 14 seasons, from 1933 through 1946, then was asked to resign.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> One of his players at Pacific in 1945-46 was Hall of Fame coach of Navy and Temple Wayne Hardin.

In the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Stagg served as a coach with the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team. He 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 died in Stockton six years later.<ref name=alafiscf/><ref name=lastwh>Template:Cite news</ref>

Vegetarianism

Stagg was reportedly an activist for vegetarianism and banned his players from using alcohol and tobacco.<ref name="Shprintzen 2013"/><ref name="Atlasobscura">Mcthenia, Tal. (2018). "How a Football Team Became Mascots for Vegetarianism". Atlasobscura.com. Retrieved 6 October 2021.</ref> In 1907, he trained his Chicago football team on a strict vegetarian diet.<ref name="Shprintzen 2013"/> This was widely reported in newspapers and vegetarian literature.<ref>"Vegetable Football". Essex County Herald (October 18, 1907).</ref><ref>"Vegetarianism in Football". The Plymouth Tribune (October 03, 1907).</ref><ref>"Vegetarianism and Football". The Vegetarian and Our Fellow Creatures 11, no. 6 (October 1907): 4; "Vegetarian Diet for the Chicago University Football Team". The Vegetarian and Our Fellow Creatures 11, no. 6 (October 1907): 6.</ref> Stagg had spent time at the vegetarian Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1907 and was inspired by John Harvey Kellogg's vegetarian diet. Although Stagg was cited in vegetarian literature as advocating a strict vegetarian diet throughout his life, in his memoir he stated that he was a vegetarian for only two years and did it in an attempt to relieve his chronic sciatic pain.<ref name="Atlasobscura"/> Stagg did not consume alcohol, coffee, or cigarettes and promoted the consumption of vegetables over red meat.<ref name="Atlasobscura"/>

Family

File:Amos Alonzo Stagg 1899 UC yearbook.png
Stagg in 1899

Stagg was married to the former Stella Robertson on September 10, 1894.<ref name=siflofb/> 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 Northern Lehigh 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The NCAA Division III National Football Championship game, played in Salem, Virginia, is named the Stagg Bowl after him.<ref name="wulf"/> The athletic stadium at Springfield College is named Stagg Field.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The football field at Susquehanna University is named Amos Alonzo Stagg Field in honor of both Stagg Sr. and Jr.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Stagg was also the namesake of the University of Chicago's old Stagg Field.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Phillips Exeter Academy also has a field named for him and a statue.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> A field in West Orange, New Jersey on Saint Cloud Avenue is also named for him.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Amos Alonzo Stagg Award is awarded annually to the "individual, group, or institution whose services have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football."<ref name=afca/> The winner of the Big Ten Football Championship Game, started in 2011, receives the Stagg Championship Trophy, named in his honor.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.

File:Amos stagg and plaque.jpg
Stagg in 1962

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The Alonzo Stagg 50/20 Hike goes through Arlington, Virginia, Washington, DC and Maryland.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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 is also an elected Fellow in the National Academy of Kinesiology (née the American Academy of Physical Education).<ref name="The National Academy of Kinesiology"/>

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 remained until 2017.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The University of Mount Union (formerly Mount Union College) won the first of its NCAA Division III-record 13 football national championships in 1993.<ref>NCAA Division III Football Championship record book</ref> The Championship was held in Shenandoah, TX, in 2018 and 2019.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium at Hall of Fame Village powered by Johnson Controls in Canton, Ohio, was originally awarded the 2020 and 2021 Stagg Bowls; however, the 2020 Championship was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The 2021 Stagg Bowl was held at Tom Benson Hall of Fame Stadium December 2–4, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Navy–Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland hosted the 2022 Stagg Bowl,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> where North Central College defeated University of Mount Union. In 2023, Salem Football Stadium in Salem, Virginia was awarded the game.

Innovations

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.

File:Yost tackle over lea.jpg
Stagg invented the end-around play (diagram pictured), and published the first book with plays diagrammed

Coaching tree

In addition to Stagg's championships and innovations, another aspect of his legacy is in his players and assistant coaches who went on to become head football and basketball coaches at other colleges and universities across the countries.

Played under:

Assistant coaches who became head coaches:

  • John Anderson: Knox (1917), Rice (1918) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Hugo Bezdek: Oregon (1906, 1913–1916), Arkansas (1908–1912), Penn State (1918–1929), Cleveland Rams (1937–1938) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Fritz Crisler: Minnesota (1930–1931), Princeton (1932–1937), Michigan (1938–1947) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Ira Davenport: Columbia (IA) (1920–1921)
  • Leo DeTray: Ole Miss (1912), Knox (1915–1916)
  • Clarence Herschberger: Lake Forest (1902–1904) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Harlan Page: Butler (1920–1925), Indiana (1926–1930), College of Idaho (1936–1937) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • James M. Sheldon: Indiana (1905–1913) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Frederick A. Speik: Purdue (1908–1909) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Amos Alonzo Stagg Jr.: Susquehanna (1935–1954) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Paul Stagg: Moravian (1934–1936), Springfield (1937–1940), Worcester Tech (1941–1946), Pacific (1947–1960) (also played under Stagg at Chicago)
  • Wayne Hardin: Navy (1959–1964), Philadelphia Bulldogs (1966), Temple (1970–1982) (also played under Stagg at Pacific)
  • Larry Siemering: Pacific (1947–1950), Arizona State (1951), Calgary Stampeders (1954)

Former players who went on to become head coaches

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Head coaching record

College football

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College baseball

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College basketball

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See also

References

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Further reading

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