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, he was an end on the first All-American team selected, in 1889. He later became 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, as well as some equipment. From 1947 to 1958 he served as an assistant coach under his son at two colleges.
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 baseball pitcher in college, 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 age 102.
Two high schools in the United States, one in Palos Hills, Illinois and the other in Stockton, California, were named after him. The NCAA Division III national football championship game is also named after him. He was also 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.
External links
- College Football Hall of Fame (http://collegefootball.org/famersearch.php?id=90015) - biography as coach
- College Football Hall of Fame (http://collegefootball.org/famersearch.php?id=88005) - biographer as player
- Basketball Hall of Fame (http://www.hoophall.com/halloffamers/Stagg.htm)
- Stagg Bowl - Division III (http://odaconline.com/staggbowl/about.htm)Template:Amfootbio-stub