University of Chicago - Cap and Gown Yearbook (Chicago, IL)

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Dismoncl, Campbell, Coach Stagg, Stegeman, Breathed, Knight. The Panama-Pacific Exposition Games, 1915. lights arrived in New l-laven, the city installed an arc on the corner over the fence, violating our privacy by making us visible to any vulgar towner who passed along Chapel Street. We drew up a petition asking its removal, which the city ignored. When we showered it with rocks, a policeman was assigned to guard it. Billy Kent, later a congressman from California, then thrust his .QQ rifle out of his dormitory window and shot the light out in the best of California tradition . . The city moved the light across the street. Membership in the Yale Glee Club, in which he sang first tenor, rounded out Staggys participation in extra-curricular activities. The Glee Club s annual Christmas trip to the West has since become a traditional ovation to Stagg. ln T890 Amos Alonzo Stagg left Yale having decided once and for all that he would never be able to be a minister. l-le felt that he could influence others to Christian ideals more effectively on the athletic field than in the pulpit. Qnce he had made up his mind concerning a career, Stagg decided to go to the Y. lVl. C. A. College at Springfield, Massachusetts to study to be a physical director. The school had been opened in 1890, and Doctor Gulick, then head of the physical department, sold Stagg on the idea of turning to this new field of work. l-le first entered as a student in a class of four and later was made a member of the teaching staff, being the proud possessor of the formidable title of Hinstructor in the theory and practice of training. Stagg well remembers another ofthe four in the class, namely ,lames lNlaismith, who later invented the game of basketball. Stagg's career as a coach began in T890 when he coached his first football team at Springfield. There were only forty-two students in the school, but he performed the remarkable feat of developing a team from a handful of players that was capable of defeating a number of New England colleges. It was during this preliminary period of coaching that Stagg made a valuable contribution to the strategy of the game in the use which he made of his ends. Making use of experience gained while playing end at Yale, he pulled his ends back out ofthe line and used them like backs to carry the ball around opposite ends and to drive into the line ahead of the ball carrier, both revolutionary practices which were later copied by the coaches of other schools. Qther drastic changes in the technique of the game were made by Stagg during his coaching years at Springfield, but they are too complicated and detailed for consideration here. The very scantiness of Stagg's material at Springfield redounded to his advantage because his remarkable teams gained wide recognition for their coach. Casper Whitney, the great football pundit of the time ably summed up Staggys coaching methods when he said, ul-lere is a school that contains just forty-two boys, and yet out of these Stagg has succeeded in developing a team that has made those of l-larvard and Yale play ball. l acknowledge at once that the school is favored exceptionally in having so thorough a student of the game as Mr. Stagg to lead, but are not Yale, l-larvard and Princeton supposed to be, and generally are, provided with expert coaches? The prime difference is that Stagg picks the most likely boy for a position, puts him in it and drills him continuously in the theory and practice of playing it, while the others, rich in candi- dates, try one after another in the line, leaving them to grope and bang against one another with little, or no aid from the coaches, tumbling into their positions after weeks of work. lf Stagg, out of a school of forty- gwqgould develop the team he has, what could he not have done with eleven such men as will face Yale atur ay. During this time many rumours were floating about the East to the effect that Stagg was planning to take charge of the Department of Athletics at Yale, but Stagg for many years had entertained the idea of becoming director of athletics at a university in the first stages of its development. lt was a poor player, stated Stagg 23

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from one end of the field to the other. Stagg usually beat the other members of the team in this daily race, and for this reason Mike Murphy, Yale track coach, had hopes of making a great sprinter out of him. l-le did turn out to be a fairly good dash man, but was never good enough for varsity competition. The 1888 team was ever victorious, scoring 698 points to its opponents' O, a record still unapproached anywhere in the country. The individual had not yet been merged into the whole quite as much as now, it still being pretty much the fashion for one side of the line to rest while a play went through the other side. Stagg played consistently good football throughout this season, although there were other members of the team who played more brilliantly. Those were the days when football scores really mounted up, the classic example being the first game of the '88 season when the Yale team completely smothered Wesleyan 105 to 0. All football fans of that period will still remember l.ee Mcflung, later treasurer of the United States, who scored a total of 500 points for Eli in his four years at half, a personal record that still stands. The Big Three of the East lost heavily by graduation in 1889 and prospects for good teams at any of the schools were very slight. Qnly three veterans returned for football at l-larvard, four at Princeton, and four at Yale, Stagg among them. Before the football season opened Stagg was reelected student secretary of the Y. M. C. A. and his time was so arranged as to permit him to enter the divinity school. It was in the course of this football season that the first murmurings were heard concerning objections to the playing of graduate and special students. The growing scandal of professionalism brought the issue to a head, and early in November, 1889, Wesleyan and Yale united in a call for a meeting which was to determine certain pressing questions of amateur standing. At this meeting the difficulties were finally ironed out, graduate students being allowed to play but professionals being banned. The end of the 1889 season saw the Princeton Tigers emerging with the coveted championship. Since the formation of the Football Association in 1879, Yale had won the title five times to l3rinceton's once and l-larvard's blank. Yale had won ninety-three out of ninety-eight games, losing three times to Princeton, once to l-larvard, and once to Columbia. Since the first time that touchdowns had been scored, the Yale total was 3000 to their opponents 56. Although the season was not outstandingly brilliant from the stand- point of the Yale team, Stagg developed a great deal of ability at deceptive and speedy ball carrying, which resulted in his selection to Walter Camps mythical All-American eleven of 1889. This sketch ofthe activities of Amos Alonzo Stagg during his years at Yale is likely to convey some wrong impressions, especially since so much space has been devoted to his participation in athletic pursuits. It is not to be thought that he spent all of his time in developing a strong body, on the contrary, through- out this six year period he set aside definite hours each day which he devoted entirely to study. l-le was deeply interested in all activities pertaining to religion and it was with areat enthusiasm that he turned to the study of religious work that was offered in addition to the prescribed training. Beginning with his freshman year, he had done much valuable work of a religious character through the local Y. M. C. A. and in the New Haven missions. ln his first post-graduate year his work in this field was re- warded when he was elected to the position of student secretary of the Y. lVl. C. A. It had been his original plan to enter the divinity school in the fall of 1888, but the time required for the student secretary's job made this impossible, so he decided to enroll for some courses in graduate study instead. Une of these courses in the study of Biblical litera- ture, was given by William Rainey l-larper, who later became the first president of the University of Chicago. It is interesting to turn for a moment to the lighter side of Yale life in the glorious '80's, and to learn how the social life of New lclaven impressed the University's greatest athlete. . . l was not a handsome youth, but that did not prevent me from i getting notes from girls on my pitching record at 1 Yale, not one to a hundred that come to the college athlete from the clear-eyed maidens, l believe they call them, of today, but l did get them. l had never been inside a theatre until that year, when a fellow student took me. Another classmate dragged me to the Junior Prom, my first dance. It would seem Below-Coming l-lame from the Penn Relays, Q6 April 1915. that College men then were muck' 95 they are DOW for Mr. Stagg recalls that . . when electric Above-Kennedy, Hall, Coach Stagg, Speer, l-larris. Champion indoor Relay Team, 1919.

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