Amos Alonzo Stagg (August 16, 1862 – March 17, 1965) was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He introduced many innovations to American football. Stagg served as the head football coach at the International YMCA Training School (now called Springfield College) (1890–1891), the University of Chicago (1892–1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933–1946), compiling a career college football record of 314–199–35 (.605). His undefeated Chicago Maroons teams of 1905 and 1913 were recognized as national champions. He was also the head basketball coach for one season at Chicago (1920–1921), and the Maroons' head baseball coach for twenty seasons (1893–1905, 1907–1913).
At Chicago, Stagg also instituted an annual prep basketball tournament and track meet. Both drew the top high school teams and athletes from around the United States.
Stagg played football as an end at Yale University and was selected to the first All-America team in 1889. He was inducted into 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 roles until the 1990s. Influential in other sports, Stagg developed basketball as a five-player sport. This five-man concept allowed his 10- (later 11-) man football team the ability to compete with each other and to stay in shape over the winter. Stagg was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame in its first group of inductees in 1959, and was elected Fellow #71 in the National Academy of Kinesiology (formerly American Academy of Physical Education) in 1946.
Stagg also forged a bond between sports and religious faith early in his career that remained important to him for the rest of his life.
Stagg was born in a poor Irish neighborhood of West Orange, New Jersey, and attended Phillips Exeter Academy.
Stagg entered Yale University in 1884 and received his bachelor's degree in 1888.
At Yale, Stagg was a pitcher on the baseball team. He declined the offers to play for six different professional baseball teams.
Stagg played on Yale's 1888 football team, and was an end on the first All-America team in 1889. He was very active in the Yale YMCA where he served as general secretary during his last two years.
Stagg spent two additional years at Yale Divinity School, studying under William Rainey Harper before deciding he could have more influence on young men through coaching than through the pulpit.
From 1890-1892, Stagg was an instructor at the International YMCA Training School, now known as Springfield College, where teacher James Naismith had invented basketball in 1891.
On March 11, 1892, Stagg, still an instructor at the YMCA School, played in the first public game of basketball. A crowd of 200 watched as the student team defeated the faculty, 5–1. Stagg scored the only basket for the losing side. He popularized the five-player lineup on basketball teams.
Stagg became the first paid football coach at Williston Seminary, a secondary school, in 1890. This was also Stagg's first time receiving pay to coach football. He coached there one day a week while also coaching full-time at the International YMCA Training School. Stagg then coached at the University of Chicago from 1892 to 1932. He was the head football coach and director of the Department of Physical Culture. Eventually, university president Robert Maynard Hutchins forced out the 70-year-old Stagg, feeling that he was too old to continue coaching.
At age 70, Stagg moved on to the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where he led the Tigers for 14 seasons, from 1933 through 1946, then was asked to resign. One of his players at Pacific in 1945-46 was Wayne Hardin, who later became the Hall of Fame coach of Navy and Temple.
In the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Stagg served as a coach with the U.S. Olympic Track and Field team. He played himself in the movie Knute Rockne, All American, released in 1940. From 1947 to 1952 he served as co-coach with his son, Amos Jr., at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. Stagg's final job was as kicking coach at the local junior college in Stockton, California, which was then known as Stockton College. "The Grand Old Man of Football" retired from Stockton College at the age of 96 and died in Stockton six years later.
Stagg was reportedly an activist for vegetarianism and banned his players from using alcohol and tobacco. In 1907, he trained his Chicago football team on a strict vegetarian diet. This was widely reported in newspapers and vegetarian literature.
Stagg had spent time at the vegetarian Battle Creek Sanitarium in 1907 and was inspired by John Harvey Kellogg's vegetarian diet. Although Stagg was cited in vegetarian literature as advocating a strict vegetarian diet throughout his life, in his memoir he stated that he was a vegetarian for only two years and did it in an attempt to relieve his chronic sciatic pain. Stagg did not consume alcohol, coffee, or cigarettes and promoted the consumption of vegetables over red meat.
Stagg was married to the former Stella Robertson on September 10, 1894. The couple had three children: two sons, Amos Jr. and Paul, and a daughter, Ruth. Both sons played for the elder Stagg as quarterbacks at the University of Chicago and each later coached college football. In 1952, Barbara Stagg, Amos' granddaughter, started coaching the high school girls' basketball team for Northern Lehigh High School in Slatington, Pennsylvania.
In 1933, Stagg donated an Milburn Light Electric 1921 Model 27L Brougham automobile (of which he was the original owner) to Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry. The vehicle remains in the museum's collection, and is today own of only 56 known surviving Milburn Light Electric vehicles in world.