Football
He introduced the option play to American football while coaching at Yale University and Cornell University. He also was football and baseball coach at Clemson University, and football coach at Washington and Lee University.
Shaughnessy was the first professional coach hired in Canadian university football and his full-time appointment at Montreal's McGill University in 1912 was not well received by the other teams in the league.
In each of his first two years, McGill won the Yates Cup football championship. He coached McGill to a 34-34-2 regular season record in 17 seasons. The 34 victories stood until 1979 as the most by a McGill football coach.
Shaughnessy played baseball during the summer in Ottawa, where he met his wife. He became involved in Ottawa sports, and was coach of the Ottawa Rough Riders for the 1915 season.
A football innovator, Shaughnessy introduced the forward pass to Canadian university football when McGill played Syracuse University in 1921 and lobbied for 10 years before the Canadian Rugby Football Union revised the rules and adopted the forward pass in 1931. He was the first football coach in Canada to introduce "X" and "Y" strategic formations and "secondary defence".
In 1969, the Shaughnessy Cup was first presented for local football supremacy between McGill and Loyola College. Since 1975, the Cup has been fought for in an annual challenge match between McGill and Concordia University.
Shaughnessy was inducted as a builder into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1963, the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983 and the McGill University Sports Hall of Fame in 1997.
Read more about this topic: Frank Shaughnessy
Famous quotes containing the word football:
“Idon’t enjoy getting knocked about on a football field for other people’s amusement. I enjoy it if I’m being paid a lot for it.”
—David Storey (b. 1933)
“People stress the violence. That’s the smallest part of it. Football is brutal only from a distance. In the middle of it there’s a calm, a tranquility. The players accept pain. There’s a sense of order even at the end of a running play with bodies stewn everywhere. When the systems interlock, there’s a satisfaction to the game that can’t be duplicated. There’s a harmony.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)