A. A. Stagg and the Origin of Wind Sprints

This is article #23 in a series covering the origins of football’s terminology. All are available under the Terminology tab above. My book, Hut! Hut! Hike! describes the emergence of more than 400 football terms.

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The recent Tidbit about the 1919 Army-Boston College game told the story of the origins of grass drills, and it led Jon Crowley, a paid subscriber, to ask about the origins of gassers and similar conditioning drills. I attempted to identify when and where gassers were born, but it proved rather tricky since the search for "gassers' brings up a slew of athletes named Gasser and a few schools with Gassers as the team nickname.

More success came from searching for the origin of "wind sprints." As I describe in Hut! Hut! Hike!, my book about the origins of football terminology, I determine the source of football terms using newspaper archives, reasoning that coaches create most football terms, with many transferring into the public realm via newspapers, especially in the old days.

Like a host of other innovations, the inventor of wind sprints appears to be the University of Chicago's football, baseball, and track mentor, Amos Alonzo Stagg. The University of Chicago had a strong track program under Stagg before WWI, and he trained multiple Olympic athletes. As covered in an earlier Tidbit, Stagg became aware of athletes using oxygen while attending the 1908 Olympics in London. After checking with Chicago's medical faculty on his return, Stagg provided oxygen on the Maroons' sideline that fall.

Stagg’s portrait in the 1909 Chicago yearbook