C. Everett "Ev" Bacon (August 18, 1890 – February 1, 1989) 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 wit ...
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 Ame ...
in college. He was also a star athlete in
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 ...
,
basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
,
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 c ...
, 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 ...
.
Bacon was twice an All-American in football (1910 and 1912). He was "one of only two players not from an Ivy League institution on the 1912 team. One of the other All-Americans on the 1912 team was
Jim Thorpe
James Francis Thorpe ( Sac and Fox (Sauk): ''Wa-Tho-Huk'', translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Nativ ...
."
As an undergraduate at
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University ( ) is a private liberal arts university in Middletown, Connecticut. Founded in 1831 as a men's college under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church and with the support of prominent residents of Middletown, the c ...
(class of 1913),
Bacon helped pioneer the use of the forward pass.
In 1966, Bacon was inducted 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 v ...
. Since 1936, Wesleyan has awarded the C. Everett Bacon Award to the institution's Most Valuable Football Player.
Wesleyan's Bacon Field House, a field house, was named to honor him.
He is interred at the
Indian Hill Cemetery
Indian Hill Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located at 383 Washington Street in Middletown, Connecticut on a hill adjacent to Wesleyan University.
History
The hill was originally named "''Wunne Wah Jet''" by the indigenous Wangunk peop ...
in
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, United States, Located along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, it is south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated by English settlers as a town under it ...
.
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bacon, Everett
1890 births
1989 deaths
People from Westbrook, Connecticut
American football quarterbacks
Baseball pitchers
Burials at Indian Hill Cemetery
Wesleyan University alumni
Wesleyan Cardinals football players
Wesleyan Cardinals baseball players
Wesleyan Cardinals men's basketball players
Wesleyan Cardinals men's tennis players
College Football Hall of Fame inductees
Players of American football from Connecticut
American men's basketball players