The Coach

COLLEGE FOOTBALL

He was hardly recognizable as a big man in sport: no glad hand, no ulcer, no cliche slogans. He never drank or smoked or swore or saw the inside of a nightclub. He was married to the same woman for 69 years. He did not care about money, and he rarely had much:

he contracted beriberi from living on soda crackers in college, never earned more than $8,500 a year, never took a loan. He was precious, persnickety, sometimes naive. He refused to recruit players or give athletic scholarships. "I would rather lose every game than win one by unfair means," he said. Over the years Amos Alonzo Stagg won a fantastic 310 games -- and invented just about everything there is to football today.

The son of a New Jersey cobbler, Stagg stood 5 ft. 6 in. tall and weighed barely 160 Ibs. when he played end for Yale in 1889 and was named to Walter Camp's first All-America Team. But his real sport then was baseball. Playing both as an undergraduate and graduate student, Stagg pitched Yale to five straight Big Three championships, was offered $4,500 to play for the New York Giants. He turned it down because ballparks had saloons in them and he was studying for the Presbyterian ministry. When a friend told him that he would never be a good public speaker, he decided to "trade the pulpit for the athletic field, and make the young men of America my ministry." In 1892 he took over as the University of Chicago's athletic director at a salary of $2,500 a year, plus an associate-professorship -- thus becoming the first coach ever to gain faculty status.

Sleepers & Statues. Football in those days was more like its ancestor, rugby.

The forward pass was illegal, and the basic notion was the wedge -- heads down, backs stiff, muscles tense, and PUSH! Stagg made it fun to watch and infinitely more fun to play. He dreamed up the huddle, the direct pass from center, the shift, the man in motion, the unbalanced line, the onside kick, the delayed buck, the sleeper play, the Statue of Liberty. In 1906, the year the forward pass was legalized, he had 64 pass plays in his playbook -- and Chicago lost only one game, to Minnesota, 4-2. He coached at Chicago for 41 years, fielded four unbeaten teams, and won six Big Ten titles.

He might have won more, if only his standards weren't so high. No member of the squad was allowed to drink or smoke; to break those rules was to beg instant dismissal. His strongest epithet was "jackass," or "double jackass" if he really got carried away, and he used ii so often that a rival coach remarked:

"By the end of a Chicago workout, there are no men playing -- just jackasses grazing." Stagg's demands affected everyone. It was typical, one day in back' a Chicago touchdown because 1909, when he ordered officials to call the ballcarrier, unnoticed by them, had stepped out of bounds. "I would like to be thought of," he explained, "as an honest man." He was--so much so that he was twice asked to referee games in which his own team was playing.

Papa & Mama. Chicago tried to pension Stagg off in 1933; after all, he was five years past retirement age. Quit at 70? Not Stagg: he packed off to little College of the Pacific in Stockton, Calif., and started scheduling the likes of Notre Dame and Cal. "If you don't schedule the big fellow," he asked, "how can you ever expect to beat him?" In 1943 Pacific trounced U.C.L.A. 19-7, won seven games, and Stagg was elected Coach of the Year. Not bad for an 81-year-old. Then Pacific also retired him, and Lon Stagg joined Son Lonnie as co-coach at Pennsylvania's tiny Susquehanna University.

"Formally," says Alonzo Jr., now 65, "he was my assistant. Practically, he was in charge. To disagree with my father was like breaking with God." Then there was Mama Stagg, who took it upon herself to scout Susquehanna's opponents. Before a game with Dickinson College in 1947, Stella Stagg, 72, presented her husband with a 40-page scouting report. "By the way, Alonzo," she said, "you can get a pass receiver behind their left halfback. He's slow." Susquehanna won by one touchdown--on a pass over Dickinson's left half.

Then Stella fell ill. The Staggs moved back to California, where he coached the kickers at Stockton College until --at last--he decided to retire at 98. Two years ago, he attended his 100th-birthday party and joked: "I may go on forever, because statistics show that few men die after the age of 100." But his blue eyes were clouding with cataracts, and he suffered the tremors of Parkinsonism. Last year his wife died. By then, he was in a Stockton nursing home, and there last week, at 102, Amos Alonzo Stagg died in his sleep.

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