Today's Tidbit... Football's First Coaching Schools and Clinics

I recently came across a claim that the first football coaching clinic came in 1924 under the direction of Ira "Irl" Tubbs, then the football and basketball coach at Wisconsin's Superior Normal School. Tubbs played football at William Jewell before coaching at Superior High School, where his top player was Ernie Nevers. Tubbs' 1920 team was widely considered the best team in the state. Their only competition for the mythical state title came from East Green Bay High, coached by a young Curly Lambeau, who was also in his first year as the Packers' player coach that year.

Tubbs took over at the Normal School in 1923, later coaching at Miami (FL) and Iowa, but is best known for developing a patented valve and needle system for inflating balls, including footballs. (More on that in a few days.)

Tubbs and Superior Normal hosted a summer coaching clinic in 1924 featuring Knute Rockne and Dr. Walter E. Meanwell, Wisconsin's basketball coach who won nine Big Ten championships in his tenure. Touted by some as the first coaching clinic, it was not and wasn't even Rockne's first clinic since "coaches' schools" had been around for at least a decade.

(Capital Times (Madison, WI), October 23, 1923)