Lowell Potter "Red" Dawson (December 20, 1906 – June 10, 1983) 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 ...

coach for the University of Pittsburgh Panthers and the

Tulane Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into a comprehensive pub ...

Green Wave at the collegiate level and the AAFC's Buffalo Bills at the professional level. He was a native of

River Falls, Wisconsin River Falls is a city in Pierce and St. Croix counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. It is adjacent to the Town of River Falls in Pierce County and the Town of Kinnickinnic in St. Croix County. River Falls is the most populous city in Pierc ...

.https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A22975/datastream/PDF/view He learned the craft of football coaching at 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. ...

under

Bernie Bierman Bernard W. Bierman (March 11, 1894 – March 7, 1977) was an American football player and coach of football and basketball. He coached from 1919 to 1950 except for a span during World War II when he served in the U.S. armed forces. Bierman was t ...

, his former coach at Tulane. At Pitt he coached future

Pro Football Hall of Fame The Pro Football Hall of Fame is the hall of fame for professional American football, located in Canton, Ohio. Opened on September 7, , the Hall of Fame enshrines exceptional figures in the sport of professional football, including players, coa ...

r Joe Schmidt and won

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

's "Dapper Dan" sports award in 1952. Dawson's greatest successes as a coach, however, were with Tulane and Buffalo. His 1939 Tulane squad went through the season undefeated before a disappointing loss to

Texas A&M Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...

in the Sugar Bowl. In 1948 his Buffalo Bills team captured the AAFC Eastern Division title in a playoff against the Baltimore Colts, though they ultimately lost the AAFC Championship Game to the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

. Dawson's final win–loss record was 36–19–4 at Tulane, 9–11–1 at Pittsburgh, and 19–25–4 at Buffalo.

Head coaching record

College

Professional

References

External links

Pro Football Reference statistics
* 1906 births 1983 deaths American football quarterbacks Michigan State Spartans football coaches Minnesota Golden Gophers football coaches Pittsburgh Panthers football coaches Tulane Green Wave football coaches Tulane Green Wave football players All-Southern college football players Players of American football from Minneapolis Sports coaches from Minneapolis {{amfoot-coach-stub