That Time the Team Captain Fired the Football Coach

Top players in pro sports today influence coaching hires, but Alex Wilson played at the end of the era when college football team captains ran the show. And so it was that after Yale's loss to Colgate in 1914 with their record standing at 3-3, Yale's captain, Alex Wilson, did something unthinkable today. He fired the team's head coach.

To understand how that happened, we have to go back to the 1870s and 1880s when team captains ran college football. Coaches did not exist as we know them today. The team captain selected the team members and ran practices assisted by former players who popped in for a week or more, volunteering their coaching services to ol' Alma Mater. The returning alums actively participated in demonstrating techniques and scrimmaging, which is why colleges often played the first game of the season against alumni teams and many football coaches wore football gear during practice for decades to come.

Yale alums who returned to help coach the varsity in the early 1900. Two wear football gear. (1904 Yale yearbook)