Football coach Amos Alonzo Stagg was born on this date in 1862. Skull and Bones at Yale, Stagg was on the first All-America team ever (1889). He coached most famously at the University of Chicago, 1892-1932. Stagg developed the man-in-motion and the lateral pass — and developed basketball as a five man game. He is in both the college football and basketball halls of fame.
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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Amos Alonzo Stagg, whose roots in basketball go as far back as James Naismith and the Springfield Y, was instrumental to basketball’s development during its formative years. An All-American football player at Yale, Stagg coached on the gridiron at the University of Chicago in 1899. In 1892, he brought basketball from Springfield to Chicago. While coach and director of athletics at the University of Chicago, he popularized the practice of five-man basketball. In 1917, Stagg organized the University of Chicago National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament, which, until its demise in 1931, did wonders to improve and standardize the rules and interpretation for high school play. Stagg coached the University of Chicago against the University of Iowa in the first college game played with five players on a side on January 16, 1896.
Stagg was 5-6 and weighed 147 pounds as a player at Yale.
Julie Newmar, Catwoman on the Batman TV series, is 78 today.
Frank Gifford is 81 today. Kathie Lee Gifford is 58 today.
One-time Oscar nominee for best supporting actress, for her performance in Victor Victoria, Lesley Ann Warren is 63 today.
Oscar-winner James Cameron is 57. Cameron won, of course, for Titanic — film editing, director, best picture.
Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone is 53. She has sold more than 300 million records — and has a Golden Globe for her performance in Evita.
Madonna is one of the most recognizable names in the world – and not just the world of music. She became the first multimedia pop icon, crossing from dance-oriented pop music into movies, television, videos, fashion and books while achieving a level of celebrity comparable to that of a primary inspiration, Marilyn Monroe. Madonna has been a ubiquitous and, at times, controversial figure since erupting on the scene with her debut single, Everybody,” in 1982. No one in the pop realm has manipulated the media with such a savvy sense of self-promotion. Yet Madonna’s career has always had a solid musical footing, and her life – however outrageous and calculated at certain points – has proceeded on an unfolding path of self-discovery and open-hearted revelation.
Best actress Oscar nominee Angela Bassett is 53 today too. She was nominated for her performance as Tina Turner in What’s Love Got to Do with It.
Laura Innes is 52. She was the longest serving member of the E.R. cast (Noah Wyle had more episodes).
Supporting actor Oscar-winner for Ordinary People when he was 20, Timothy Hutton is 51.
Steve Carrell is 49.
Emily Robison of the Dixie Chicks is 39. Originally Emily Erwin (Robison is her married name), she and her sister Martie (now Maguire) founded the group with two other classmates. The other two left and the group added Natalie Maines as the lead singer in 1995.
Fess Parker and Robert Culp, both big stars on TV, were born on August 16th — Parker in 1924, Culp in 1930. Parker was most famously Davy Crockett, discovered by Disney after seeing Them!, where Parker had a bit part. The Crockett role was both Parker’s professional success and doom, the latter because Disney wouldn’t let the actor portray any other type of character but the soft-spoken, pioneer hero type. Ultimately that led to his portrayal of Daniel Boone on NBC, 165 episodes 1964-1970. Culp was best known as the tennis player-secret agent on I Spy with co-star Bill Cosby, 1965-1968.
The first issue of Sports Illustrated was published 57 years ago.
