Rare film of Amos Alonzo Stagg -- one of the greatest innovators in football history -- was unearthed from a trash can.
For our viewing pleasure, extraordinary home movie footage from 1926 has been digitized by the Chicago Film Archives. The film briefly shows Stagg's University of Chicago football team in action late in the 1926 season. That season was a forgettable one for Stagg's team, which might explain why an attempt was made to discard the film.
Hit the 8:25 mark for remarkable football footage.
Stagg coached at the University of Chicago from 1896 through 1932, and along the way he was a pioneer in American sport. Among the innovations that Stagg is credited with bringing to football include the tackling dummy, the huddle, the man in motion, the Statue of Liberty play, the lateral pass and uniform numbers. Stagg is also credited with the development of the batting cage for baseball.
Stagg made those football innovations a necessary part of the modern game during more than 50 years as a college football coach, most of which at the University of Chicago, which was a member of the Big Ten at the time (and a seven-time conference champion under Stagg's careful watch).
If that's not enough, Stagg scored the lone basket for the losing side in the very first public game of basketball (final score, 5-1), played in front of a crowd of 200 people in Springfield, Mass. For his contributions to sports, Stagg has been inducted in the National Basketball Hall of Fame and was a charter member of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Stagg's legacy lives on to this day. The NCAA's Division III national championship game as well as the trophy presented to the winner of the Big Ten title game both are named in Stagg's honor. Stagg's name was also attached to the football field shown in that 1926 film. Under that field on Dec. 2, 1942 a team of Manhattan Project scientists created the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, which had a bit of a hand in altering human history.
Follow Jim Reineking on Twitter @jimreineking.
