Henry Lane Williams (July 26, 1869 – June 14, 1931) 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 and coach. He served as the head football coach at the

United States Military Academy The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a fort, since it sits on strategic high groun ...

in 1891 and the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

from 1900 to 1921, compiling a career college football record of 141–34–12. Williams's Minnesota Golden Gophers football, Minnesota Golden Gophers teams won eight Western Conference—now known as the Big Ten Conference—titles and his 136 wins are the most of any coach in team history. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1951.

Coaching career

After playing football at Yale University under head coach Walter Camp, where with Camp he co-invented the "tackle-back" formation, Williams began his coaching career at the

in 1891 while he was a teacher at Siglar Academy in Newburgh, New York. He then moved to Philadelphia where he enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine while he coached football and track at William Penn Charter School. In 1900, Williams was hired as the head football coach at the

, where he invented the Minnesota shift."Sport: Trophies and Gophers"
''Time (magazine), Time'', November 3, 1941. His Minnesota Golden Gophers football, Minnesota Golden Gophers were Big Ten Conference champions eight times (1900, 1903, 1904, 1906, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1915). Williams had a 136–33–11 record at Minnesota. His winning percentage (.786) is the highest of any Gopher football coach to date with the exception of Wallie Winter who went 6–0 in his only season 1893. In 1903, the Gophers went 14–0–1. Their lone tie came against Fielding H. Yost's 1903 Michigan Wolverines football team, Michigan Wolverines. After the contest, the Wolverines left behind their water jug at Northrop Field, which gave rise to the Little Brown Jug (football), Little Brown Jug, one of the oldest and most famous college football trophies. Williams was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame with the inaugural class in 1951. Williams Arena, the home venue for Minnesota basketball, was renamed in his honor after a remodeling in the 1950s.

Legacy

Williams coaching tree includes: #Bernie Bierman #Gil Dobie #Clark Shaughnessy

Head coaching record

College

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Henry 1869 births 1931 deaths 19th-century players of American football American football halfbacks Army Black Knights football coaches Minnesota Golden Gophers football coaches Yale Bulldogs football players High school football coaches in Pennsylvania College Football Hall of Fame inductees Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni Coaches of American football from Connecticut Players of American football from Hartford, Connecticut