Amos Alonzo Stagg

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Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862–March 17, 1965), was a renowned 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 secret Skull and Bones society, he was an end on the first All-American team, selected in 1889.

He later became the coach at Springfield College (1890-91), the University of Chicago (1892-1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933-46). 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. From 1947 to 1958 he served as an assistant coach under 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.

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 impacted the game through his invention of the batting cage.

Known as the "grand old man" of college football, Stagg died in Stockton, California, at 102 years old.

Two high schools in the United States, one in Palos Hills, Illinois, and the other in Stockton, California, and an elementary school in Chicago were named after him. The NCAA Division III national football championship game, played in Salem, Virginia, is named after him. 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.

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

[edit] Innovations in football

huddle
putting players' names on the backs of their uniforms
lateral pass
man in motion
numbering plays and playing
tackling dummy
helmets

[edit] External links

College Football Hall of Fame - biography as coach
College Football Hall of Fame - biographer as player
Basketball Hall of Fame
Stagg Bowl - Division III
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Preceded by Unknown	Springfield College Head Football Coach 1890–1891	Succeeded by Unknown
Preceded by None	Chicago Head Football Coach 1892–1932	Succeeded by Clark Shaughnessy
Preceded by Erwin Righter	Pacific Head Football Coach 1933–1946	Succeeded by Laurence Sienering