Bill Reid (American football)
| Sport(s) | Football |
|---|---|
| Biographical details | |
| Born |
October 25, 1878 San Francisco, California |
| Died | September 28, 1976 (aged 97) Brookline, Massachusetts |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
| Playing career | |
| 1898–1899 | Harvard |
| Position(s) | Fullback |
| Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
| 1901 | Harvard |
| 1905–1906 | Harvard |
| Head coaching record | |
| Overall | 30–3–1 |
| Accomplishments and honors | |
| Championships | |
| 1 National (1901) | |
|
College Football Hall of Fame Inducted in 1970 (profile) |
|
William T. Reid, Jr. (October 25, 1878 – September 28, 1976) was an American football player and coach of Harvard's football team for the 1901, 1905, and 1906 seasons. Though his goal was to produce winning teams, mounting injuries and intensifying criticism of the game fueled demands for its abolition and pressured Reid into a leadership role in the momentous 1906 rule changes which defused this threat. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1970.
Reid was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area where his father was head of a prep school. When he decided to attend Harvard University, he exhibited such athletic promise that he was actively recruited by both the football and baseball teams. He immediately proved himself to be an outstanding baseball catcher, starting his freshman year and then serving as captain of the university's championship teams his junior and senior years. In football, he started at fullback his sophomore year and scored two touchdowns in Harvard's momentous 1898 victory over Yale, its first since the initial meeting of the teams in 1875. Though injuries constrained his involvement with football over the following two seasons, the Boston Transcript later characterized him, in its account of his wedding, as "one of the best athletes that ever came out [of Harvard]."
Following his graduation, Reid was appointed student coach of the football team, a long-standing practice whereby early teams selected a graduate player from the previous season to be its coach. Reid's 1901 team went undefeated and crushed Yale 22-0 in its final game. Afterwards, Reid accepted a teaching position at his father's school in order to provide financial support for his wife and family.
Ensuing losses, especially ones to Yale, convinced the team and Harvard's Athletic Committee to dispense with student-amateur coaches in 1905 and to raise enough money to hire Reid, making him one of the game's first professional coaches. The conscientiousness with which Reid shouldered these responsibilities is reflected in his lengthy catalogues of notes. He devised both a weight training program and a special meal table. He improved equipment to reduce injuries and devised better treatment for them. He appointed a large staff of assistants so that every position got special instruction. Finally he made a concerted effort to turn his players into good students.
Reid also crafted his team's schedule so that its initial games were against weak opponents that gained the team easy victories and opportunities for improvement. However, off-field developments soon revealed that the fall of 1905 would not be a normal season. Several articles in major magazines complained about the rising number of injuries, the huge money pouring into the game, and widespread recruiting abuses. By October, President Theodore Roosevelt was sufficiently concerned about these criticisms that he summoned the coaches of the big three—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—to a White House discussion of the situation and insisted that they sign an accord "to carry out in letter and in spirit the rules of the game." Several weeks later, Reid learned that Charles Elliot, the President of Harvard, was urging his Board of Overseers to abolish football. Deciding that he needed to act, Reid gathered several supporters and drafted a public release to newspapers advocating that current rules of football be radically changed.
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