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| Amos Alonzo Stagg | |
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Position: End |
| Member Biography | |
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Amos Alonzo Stagg is a charter member of the College
Football Hall of Fame, elected as both player and coach in
1951. He was born August 16, 1862, in West Orange, New
Jersey, and enrolled at Yale as a divinity student. He played
five seasons for the Bulldogs and took up football as a sport
secondary to baseball. He was an accomplished pitcher
receiving offers to play professionally as he led Yale to five
championships. He saw little action in his first two seasons,
but in 1888 Stagg was a regular on one of the greatest teams
of all time. That year Yale won 13 games, out-scoring the
opposition 698-0. Besides Stagg, the team featured three
other Hall of Fame members, William Corbin, Pudge
Heffelfinger and George Woodruff. Entering his final collegiate
game against Princeton in 1889, Yale had won 37 consecutive
games. In the second half of a scoreless game, Stagg
prevented a touchdown by tackling Hall of Famer “Snake”
Ames deep in Yale territory. Unfortunately for the Bulldogs,
Princeton later pushed across two scores to defeat Yale 10-0.
For his career, Stagg and his teammates posted a 53-2-1
record, and he was chosen a member of the first All-America
team in 1889. After his playing career he went on to coach for
54 seasons, winning 314 games at Springfield College,
University of Chicago and the College of the Pacific. He
invented the batting cage for baseball and the trough for
overflow in swimming pools. Stagg died March 17, 1965, at
age 102 in Stockton, California.
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