Amos Alonzo Stagg - Innovations in Football

Coach of American football, born in West Orange, New Jersey, USA. An end for Yale, he was named to the first All-America team (1889) and began his 72-year coaching career the next year. In 1892 he became coach at the University of Chicago, remaining until 1932, when he reached the school's mandatory retirement age of 70. During his tenure there, he produced four undefeated teams and won seven Western Conference titles. In 1933–46 he coached at College of Pacific, winning Coach of the Year honours (1943) at age 81 when his team won seven games against major competition. After retiring as a head coach, he continued as an assistant until he was 98. He gained his nickname as a spokesman for fair, clean sport, and was also a remarkably innovative football coach, inventing dozens of plays, tactics, and strategies that became standard for other coaches.

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 later became coach at Springfield College (1890-91), the University of Chicago (1892-1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933-46).

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.

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, and an elementary school in Chicago, Illinois were named after him. The NCAA Division III national football championship game, played in Salem, Virginia, 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, as well as Stagg Memorial Stadium, Pacific's football and soccer stadium.

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

Innovations in Football

huddle labeling backs of uniforms with players' names lateral pass man in motion numbering plays and playing tackling dummy