Coaches Wearing Their College Letter Sweaters
An interesting aspect of football's past was the wearing of college letter sweaters by coaches and game officials. Game officials wearing their letter sweaters acted as a credential. Players and fans knew they had played the game, but wearing a letter sweater for a school that was not playing indicated that they would be impartial in their observations and rulings.
That makes sense to me, but coaches wearing letter sweaters from their playing days rather than gear associated with the school they coached at seems odd. Coaches wearing college letters also offered credibility, though you would think that team fans would know who they were.
In most cases, only one coach appears in his college sweater, making the image below even more special. The picture from the football section of Montana's 1911 yearbook shows four men wearing sweaters bearing the letters M, Y, S, and M.
Robert H. Cary, Montana's head coach, played football at Montana in 1904 and 1905, so you might think he would be one of the fellas wearing an M on this chest, but he is not. Instead, Cary transferred to Yale in 1906 and tried out for freshman football but never lettered, though he was an outstanding sprinter on Yale's track team, competing in the 1908 Olympic Trials. So, he wore a Yale track letter for Montana's football picture rather than an M he presumably won while playing football in Missoula.
Assistants A. F. Bishop, who captained Montana's 1908 football team, and George Ferdinand Weisel, a former Minnesota player and assistant coach, wear their Ms, while the team doctor, William H. Warren, earned his letter for basketball at Drake.
Of course, the boys at Montana did not start the coach wearing his letter sweater tradition. Pop Bliss wore his Yale sweater while coaching Stanford in 1893.
Fielding Yost, Michigan's long-time coach and athletic director, played all but one college game for West Virginia, but since he played as a ringer for Lafayette in 1896 in their upset victory over Penn, he received a Lafayette letter and was still wearing it while coaching Michigan in 1902.
Matthew Bullock, who played at Dartmouth, coached UMass in 1904 while attending Harvard Law.
Willis Kienholz, a Minnesota letterman, coached North Carolina in 1906.
Sam Dolan wore his Notre Dame letter sweater while coaching Oregon State in 1911 and 1912.
Meanwhile, Bill Warner, Pop's bigger younger brother, was a Cornell letterman who took his talents to Oregon in 1910 and 1911, on the last stop of his coaching career.
Finally, Herman "Bo" Olcott lettered at Yale during the 1899, 1900, and 1901 seasons, yet fifteen years later, he still sporting his Y while coaching at Kansas. Of course, one wonders whether the socks matched the sweater.
Coaches wearing college letters fell out of the mainstream by the early 1920s, which probably wasn’t a big loss. Why the practice fell out of favor is as mysterious as why it developed in the first place.
If you enjoy Football Archaeology, consider subscribing or buying one of my books. Alternatively, reach out if you need writing and editorial services.
In Arkansas’s 1904 yearbook you’ll see a man wearing a “T” letter sweater in the picture of the university’s 1903 football team. It’s David Albert McDaniel, who was a guard on the 1900 University of Texas team and later coached at Arkansas in 1903. I included that picture in a post I wrote about McDaniel earlier this year.
https://open.substack.com/pub/texasandlonghornhistory/p/texas-longhorn-ghost-towns-orangeville
Gee, I thought Warren's "D" was for "Doctor."