Sport: Stagg’s 54th

“This hasn’t happened since 1886.”

Cotton-haired, devout, 81-year-old Amos Alonzo Stagg was being carried off the field last week on the shoulders of his football team. His College of the Pacific team had just toppled a collection of All-Americas and professionals from Del Monte Pre-Flight, 16-to-7, in one of the season’s biggest upsets. Not since Alonzo Stagg pitched Yale’s baseball team to a 6-to-5 victory over Harvard 57 years ago had he beamed so broadly. His College of the Pacific looked like the strongest on the Pacific Coast, perhaps his best team since University of Chicago ruled the Big Ten Conference in 1924.

Before the game Del Monte was a 5-to-1 favorite to win. Unbeaten in four starts, it was rated the strongest service eleven in the U.S. The backfield alone was good enough for any professional team: “Passing Paul” Christman of Missouri, Fordham’s Len Eshmont, Ohio State’s Jim McDonald, Parker Hall of Mississippi and the Cleveland Rams. Right end was 225-lb. Ed Cifers, All-America from Tennessee; left end was another All-America, Bowden Wyatt of Mississippi.

But Stagg’s Tigers—Navy trainees who had played some football themselves—outfought and outtricked Del Monte for Stagg’s greatest victory in 54 years of coaching.

The Start. Lonny Stagg’s football began at Yale, where he was end on Walter Camp’s first All-America in 1889.

He was also one of the best pitchers in the U.S. and while at Yale he had offers from six big-league teams. But his ambition lay in the ministry and he concentrated on Bible under William Rainey Harper. When Harper became president of brand-new University of Chicago, he offered Lonny Stagg $1,500 to head the athletic department.

Stagg was speechless at the figure.

“I’ll give you $2,000 and an assistant professorship.” Stagg still could not answer.

The ante jumped to $2,500 and an associate professorship, a lifetime job. Stagg managed to accept before the terms went any higher.

In 41 years at Chicago, Stagg won 273 games, lost 142. On his teams played such alltime greats as Walter Eckersall, Fritz Crisler and Hugo Bezdek. Stagg used the first tackling dummy (an old mattress), originated the end-around play, the tackle back shift, was the first to use the hidden-ball principle. He developed the shift, which later became the mainspring of the Rockne system, and Rockne credited his offense to Stagg.

It’s Just a Game. By 1933 Stagg was 70 and up for mandatory retirement. Double A Stagg was football’s Grand Old Man. Only Connie Mack, 80-year-old manager of the Philadelphia Athletics, compared with him then (as he does now) in disregard of age. Both hate liquor and tobacco. Both have infinite faith in their players. Both recognize that baseball and football are only games—something few coaches admit—and refuse to flail their breasts or their players when they hit a losing streak.

At 71, Stagg had still not had his fill of football. He took his second lifetime job, coaching at Pacific. As at Chicago, his wife was his chief scout. In ten years, with poor material, he won less than half his games. Pacific sometimes grumbled that the Old Man was aging and should gracefully retire. But Stagg stubbornly continued to teach his boys to play for fun.*

When the Navy sent football men to Pacific, Stagg was deluged with three veterans for each position, including an ex-St. Mary’s passing ace named Johnny Podesto. Stagg drilled home his system, called a “6-dinger,” which he invented at Yale in 1889. He explained his nomenclature: the quarterback is the “on back,” the full the “off,” the halfs the “rear” and “wing,” depending on which leads the play. He thought he might win a few games. Last week’s victory was the fifth straight.

If Pacific gets by Southern California this week, it should end the season undefeated and the Coast’s contender for the national championship title, for which Army, Navy and Notre Dame (also a Navy school) are contending spectacularly. It would also give Alonzo Stagg his first crack at coaching a Rose Bowl team.

Alonzo Stagg’s old custom when he won a game was to let things go, celebrate by eating a quart of ice cream. With the wartime shortage he has had to run in a substitute—a dish of fresh figs.

*When Chicago was futilely pounding at the center of the Princeton line with only two yards to go in the 1922 game, an assistant coach suggested to Stagg that he substitute his son to make an end run. He refused, Chicago lost by three points, and Alonzo Jr. never won his letter. Later Stagg justified himself by pointing to a footnote in the rule book: “The [rules] committee deprecates the use of a substitute to convey information.”