Amos Alonzo Stagg was born in 1862 and lived for more than a century. After he graduated from high school in New Jersey, he enrolled in Phillips Exeter Academy in order to prepare for his dream, attending Yale University. At the age of 22, he entered Yale fully intending to become a minister.
Stagg played football and baseball for Yale. He was a member of Walter Camp’s first college All-American football team in 1886. He pitched for Yale and once stuck out 20 Princeton batters in a game. Stagg turned down a professional baseball contract from the New York Giants because of his disdain for professional athletics.
In addition to his athletic pursuits, he was financial manager of the Yale Daily News, a glee club singer, and a member of both Psi Upsilon and Skull and Bones Society. He graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. Preaching was not his strong suit so he turned his sights away from the pulpit. He headed to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he worked in the athletic department of the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School (now Springfield College). He coached baseball and football at Springfield College from 1889-92. He and James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, were colleagues.
On March 11, 1892, he played in the first public basketball game, an event which took place at Springfield College. Stagg scored the only basket for the faculty team. The score was 5-1 and the student team won.
William Rainey Harper had been handpicked by John D. Rockefeller to head up the University of Chicago. Harper asked Stagg, his former student, to join him in Chicago. Harper’s offer came with tenure and a title of Director of the Department of Physical Culture. In 1892, Stagg coached his first football game at Chicago. Two years later. Marshall Field, the Chicago store owner, donated a new field on which the football team played. Marshal Field’s field became known as Stagg Field.
In addition to football, Stagg coached track and field, baseball, and basketball. When his University of Chicago basketball team played the University of Iowa on January 18, 1896, it was the first basketball game played with five members per team. The five-on-five concept was his brainchild, according to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
He took on the moniker of the “Grand Old Man of Football.” A biography of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the University of Chicago president who closed down its football program a few years after he forced Stagg to retire at age 70, contains this quote about Stagg, “The most reverent moment of the year was the moment at the Interfraternity Sing when the old grads of Psi Upsilon marched down the steps to the fountain in Hutchison Court with the Old Man at their head.”
The Annals of Psi Upsilon called him “one of Psi Upsilon’s most beloved members.” The March 1933 Diamond of Psi Upsilon told of Stagg’s “retirement” from the University of Chicago. “Surely no one ever has been more respected, and admired in the world of clean sports than Brother Amos Alonzo Stagg who will retire in June as Professor and Director of Physical Education and Athletics at the University of Chicago. He has served the University for forty-one consecutive years.” The Diamond then quoted an article which appeared in the February 5, 1933 Chicago Tribune. In it, Stagg said, “I went west when I was a young man. I’m going west again, and I’m still a young man.” He added, “I shall leave with the deepest lumps in my throat. At 70 men are not supposed to have ambition. But at 70 I have the body of a middle-aged man. I have ambition, enthusiasm, will power, experience, fertility of invention, and the vitality to start on a new career and carry it on for 20 years. Mrs. Stagg joins me willingly and gladly on this new adventure.”
He spent the next 13 years coaching football at the College (now University) of the Pacific. In 1946, he joined his son, head coach Amos Alonzo Scagg, Jr., as assistant coach of the Susquehanna University team. He remained at Susquehanna until 1953 when he became assistant coach of Stockton Junior College. He retired from coaching in 1960 at the age of 98. His coaching record is 314 wins, 199 losses, and 35 ties.
Knute Rockne once said, “All football comes from Stagg.” Stagg played himself in the 1940 film Knute Rockne All American.
Stagg served on the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1906-32. He co-founded the American Football Coaches Association in 1922. In 1943, at the age of 81, he was named Coach of the Year. In 1951, he was inducted in the College Football Hall of Fame. He was the first person doubly inducted as both a player and a coach. For 41 years, Stagg held the college football coaching record as head coach at one school. In 2007, the record was broken by Joe Paterno, Penn State’s coach. The NCAA Division III football championship game is named for him. Each year the Amos Alonzo Stagg Award is given for “advancement of the best interests of football.” In 1959, he was a charter inductee of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
In addition to the five-on-five basketball game, Stagg is credited with many sporting inventions including the indoor batting cage, the huddle, the tackling dummy, the center snap, numbers on uniforms, the lateral pass, the direct pass from center, cross blocking and the backfield shift.
Stagg and his wife Stella were married for 70 years. She died in 1964 at the age of 88. They had three children, two sons and a daughter. His sons, Amos Alonzo, Jr. and Paul, were members of the Psi Upsilon chapter at the University of Chicago. Stagg died in 1965 at the age of 102.
The 1888 Yale football team.
Yale baseball team, Stagg is on the left in the dark shirt.
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