Playing Days
Milligan played high school football at Aliquippa High School and Kiski School. While at college at the University of Pittsburgh, Milligan played guard from 1929 to 1931 under the school's legendary coach Jock Sutherland. The lightest of Pitt guards in 1930, and listed at a height of 5 feet, 10 inches and weighing 168 pounds, Milligan broke into the lineup at left guard when Hart Morris was injured in an October 11 game at Western Reserve. The teams on which Milligan played while at Pitt were regional powers and nationally regarded. The 1929 Pitt team went undefeated in the regular season and won the Eastern Championship and appeared in the Rose Bowl losing to USC. The loss did not prevent football historian Parke H. Davis from naming Pitt as that season's national champion. The following season, Milligan's first as a regular starter, saw the Panthers go 6–2–1. This was followed by an 8–1 finish in 1931 in which the Panthers recorded six shutouts, including a 40–0 dismantling of Nebraska. That season also saw Pitt defeat Penn State in State College, using only one first-string player, by a score of 41–6 en route to winning the Eastern Championship. These accomplishments would prompt Parke Davis to again name the Panthers national champions. During his summers in college, Milligan worked as a desk sergeant with the Aliquippa Police Department.
Read more about this topic: Mike Milligan (coach)
Famous quotes containing the words playing and/or days:
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The attraction and superiority of California are in its days. It has better days & more of them, than any other country.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)