Amos Alonzo Stagg: His football coaching career at the University of Chicago

The purpose of the study was to discover and to report information about the life and professional career of Amos Alonzo Stagg and his contributions to American collegiate football during his forty-one years as head football coach at the University of Chicago.;Amos Alonzo Stagg was born in August, 1862, in West Orange, New Jersey. Stagg set out to become a minister and became an athletic director and coach by accident. He won his early fame in baseball, but his name is primarily linked to college football.;After graduation from high school, Stagg entered Phillips-Exeter Academy and later Yale University. At Yale he was a noted pitcher in baseball and an end on the football team. In 1889, Stagg was selected on Walter Camp's first All-American football team.;An inability to speak before audiences was the factor which turned Stagg from the ministry and to athletics. His decision in 1889 to pursue a career in athletics was the beginning of an athletic career which led Stagg to the Springfield Y.M.C.A. Training School to the University of Chicago and, finally, to the College of the Pacific as a head coach.;Stagg spent fifty-seven years as a head football coach, and during that time he won 314 games, third on the all-time list of most victories by one coach.;Stagg's contributions to football began as a player and spanned nearly all of his seventy-one years as an active coach. For those contributions, Stagg received many honors and awards, including the national Coach of the Year Award in 1943 at the age of eighty-one. Stagg is the only person in history to be voted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a player and as a coach. He is also a member of the College Basketball Hall of Fame. Stagg died in Stockton, California, in 1965.;Based on the findings in this study, Amos Alonzo Stagg was truly a pioneer in the development of college football. During his career, Stagg received many honors and awards indicative of his many contributions in the areas of physical education and athletics, particularly, college football. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.).