Michael Joseph "Iron Mike" Donahue (June 14, 1876 – December 11, 1960) was an
American football
American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...
player, coach of football,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
,
baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...
,
tennis
Tennis is a racket sport that is played either individually against a single opponent (singles) or between two teams of two players each (doubles). Each player uses a tennis racket that is strung with cord to strike a hollow rubber ball cov ...
,
track
Track or Tracks may refer to:
Routes or imprints
* Ancient trackway, any track or trail whose origin is lost in antiquity
* Animal track, imprints left on surfaces that an animal walks across
* Desire path, a line worn by people taking the shorte ...
,
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
, and
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...
, and a college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at
Auburn University
Auburn University (AU or Auburn) is a public land-grant research university in Auburn, Alabama. With more than 24,600 undergraduate students and a total enrollment of more than 30,000 with 1,330 faculty members, Auburn is the second largest ...
(1904–1906, 1908–1922), at
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University (officially Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, commonly referred to as LSU) is a public land-grant research university in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The university was founded in 1860 n ...
(1923–1927), and at
Spring Hill College (1934).
In 18 seasons coaching football at Auburn, Donahue amassed a record of 106–35–5 and had three squads go undefeated with four more suffering only one loss. His .743 career winning percentage is the second highest in Auburn history, surpassing notable coaches such as
John Heisman
John William Heisman (October 23, 1869 – October 3, 1936) was a player and coach of American football, baseball, and basketball, as well as a sportswriter and actor. He served as the head football coach at Oberlin College, Buchtel College ...
and
Ralph "Shug" Jordan. Donahue Drive in
Auburn, Alabama
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama, with a 2020 population of 76,143. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area. The Auburn-Opelika, AL MSA with a population ...
, on which
Jordan–Hare Stadium
Jordan–Hare Stadium (properly pronounced n central Alabama dialectas ) is an American football stadium in Auburn, Alabama on the campus Auburn University. It primarily serves as the home venue of the Auburn Tigers football team. The stadium ...
is located and the
Tiger Walk
The Auburn Tigers are the athletic teams representing Auburn University, a public four-year coeducational university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. The Auburn Tigers compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Associ ...
takes place, is named in his honor, as is Mike Donahue Drive on the LSU campus.
Donahue also coached basketball (1905–1921), baseball, track, and soccer (1912–?)
at Auburn and baseball (1925–1926) and tennis (1946–1947) at LSU. He was inducted as a coach into the
College Football Hall of Fame
The College Football Hall of Fame is a hall of fame and interactive attraction devoted to college football. The National Football Foundation (NFF) founded the Hall in 1951 to immortalize the players and coaches of college football that were vo ...
as part of its inaugural class in 1951.
Early life
Donahue was born in
County Kerry, Ireland and attended
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
.
[ There he lettered in football, basketball, track and cross country.] Donahue played as a substitute quarterback
The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Am ...
on the football team, and was twice captain of the scrub team.[ ] He graduated in 1903. Donahue stood just 5'4" tall, with red hair and blue eyes.
Coaching career
Auburn
Football
Upon graduating college, Donahue became the tenth head coach of the Auburn Tigers football
The Auburn Tigers football program represents Auburn University in the sport of American college football. Auburn competes in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the Western Divisio ...
team beginning in 1904, the same year Vanderbilt hired Dan McGugin. Former Auburn head coach Billy Watkins led the effort to acquire Donahue.[ Contrasting with McGugin, ]Fuzzy Woodruff
Lorenzo Ferguson "Fuzzy" Woodruff (May 27, 1884 – December 7, 1929) was an early 20th-century American sportswriter known throughout most of the southeast for his vivid writing. He was also a music and drama critic. He began his newspaper c ...
wrote that Donahue was "a mouse-like little man with little to say, save when aroused, on which he was capable of utterances of great fire and fervor." His teams were led by his 7–2–2 defense
The 7–2–2 defense or seven-box defense, used seven "down linemen", or players on the line of scrimmage at the time of the snap, two linebackers, and two safeties. .
His coaching career saw immediate success, as his first team went undefeated at 5–0 including a defeat of rival Alabama which was the purpose for his hiring. Donahue's Auburn teams won six Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association
The Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA) was one of the first collegiate athletic conferences in the United States. Twenty-seven of the current Division I FBS (formerly Division I-A) football programs were members of this conferen ...
titles, in 1904, 1908, 1910
Events
January
* January 13 – The first public radio broadcast takes place; live performances of the operas '' Cavalleria rusticana'' and ''Pagliacci'' are sent out over the airwaves, from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York C ...
, 1913
Events January
* January 5 – First Balkan War: Battle of Lemnos – Greek admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis forces the Turkish fleet to retreat to its base within the Dardanelles, from which it will not venture for the rest of the ...
, 1914 and 1919.
Donahue's 1913 and 1914 teams went undefeated, with the 1914 squad allowing zero points to be scored all year, and have been recognized as national champions by various, retroactive selectors including Billingsley Report and the Howell Ratings. From 1913 into 1915, Auburn went 22 consecutive games without a loss. One source on the 1913 team reads "Coach Donahue loved the fullback dive and would run the play over and over again before sending the elusive Newell wide on a sweep."
Donahue's 1920 team averaged a then-school record 36.9 points per game. His last team was considered one of the best teams Auburn turned out in the first half of the 20th century.
His .743 career winning percentage is the second highest in Auburn history, surpassing notable coaches including John Heisman
John William Heisman (October 23, 1869 – October 3, 1936) was a player and coach of American football, baseball, and basketball, as well as a sportswriter and actor. He served as the head football coach at Oberlin College, Buchtel College ...
, Ralph "Shug" Jordan, Pat Dye
Patrick Fain Dye (November 6, 1939 – June 1, 2020) was an American football player, coach, and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at East Carolina University (1974–1979), the University of Wyoming (1980), ...
, Terry Bowden, and Tommy Tuberville
Thomas Hawley Tuberville ( ; born September 18, 1954) is an American retired college football coach and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Alabama since 2021. Before entering politics, Tuberville was the head football ...
.
Athletic director and other sports
Donahue also served as athletic director
An athletic director (commonly "athletics director" or "AD") is an administrator at many American clubs or institutions, such as colleges and universities, as well as in larger high schools and middle schools, who oversees the work of coaches and ...
, basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...
coach, baseball coach, track coach, and soccer coach while at Auburn.
=Basketball
=
In 1905, Donahue initiated the school's first official varsity basketball team, which went 3–1–1, including victories over Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...
and Tulane, a two-point loss to the Columbus (Georgia) All-Stars, and a tie with the Birmingham Athletic Club. Under Donahue, basketball practice was a contact sport; a former player once lamented, "He never bothered calling fouls--said it slowed up the game."
=Soccer
=
In 1912, he coached Auburn's first soccer team. By the beginning of the 1915 season, Auburn was only playing athletic clubs and prep schools and had yet to participate in an intercollegiate match, due to a lack of soccer programs at other Southern colleges.
LSU
Donahue went on to become the seventeenth head football coach at LSU in 1923 and had a 23–19–3 record over five seasons before retiring from coaching after the 1927 season. The 1924 team beat Indiana
Indiana () is a U.S. state in the Midwestern United States. It is the 38th-largest by area and the 17th-most populous of the 50 States. Its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. Indiana was admitted to the United States as the 19th ...
. The 1927 team tied Wallace Wade's Alabama Crimson Tide
The Alabama Crimson Tide refers to the intercollegiate athletic varsity teams that represent the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa. The Crimson Tide teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I as a me ...
.
He also served briefly as the head coach of the LSU Tigers baseball
The LSU Tigers baseball team represents Louisiana State University in NCAA Division I college baseball. The team participates in the West Division of the Southeastern Conference. It ranks seventh overall with 18 College World Series app ...
team (1925–1926), compiling a record of 15–15–3, and as the head men's tennis coach at LSU (1946–1947), tallying a mark of 0–7. In 1944 and 1945, Donahue served as the head coach of the LSU Tigers golf team.
Spring Hill
Donahue served as the athletic director at Spring Hill College from 1929 to 1936.[ In 1931, Donahue assisted ]Pat Browne
Patrick M. Browne (born December 8, 1963) is an American accountant, lawyer, and politician. A Republican, he served as a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (1995–2005) and Pennsylvania Senate (2005–2022). On January 12, 20 ...
with the football team at Spring Hill. In 1934, Donahue reentered the active coaching ranks, when he was hired as head coach and mentored his son, Mike, Jr.Mike Donahue Coaches Again
''St. Petersburg Times'', Nov 14, 1934.
Death and legacy
Donahue died on December 11, 1960 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Head coaching record
Football
Basketball
Baseball
See also
*
Notes
References
Bibliography
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Donahue, Mike
1876 births
1960 deaths
19th-century players of American football
American baseball coaches
American men's basketball coaches
American football quarterbacks
American tennis coaches
Auburn Tigers athletic directors
Auburn Tigers football coaches
Auburn Tigers men's basketball coaches
LSU Tigers baseball coaches
LSU Tigers football coaches
LSU Tigers golf coaches
LSU Tigers tennis coaches
Spring Hill Badgers athletic directors
Spring Hill Badgers football coaches
Yale Bulldogs football players
College golf coaches in the United States
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
People from County Kerry
Irish emigrants to the United States (before 1923)