#WalterCamp September 3

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September’s 30 Day #Coach4adayChallenge is to profile a biography on someone. Today I choose WALTER CAMP.

This weekend is the big kickoff to college football. My biography is on one of America’s earliest college football coaches.

Last week my friend Carey Read send me a message and told me he wanted to return a book to its rightful owner. Butch Gane had loaned me the biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W Brands and it turn I gave it to Carey.

That book opened my eyes to a fascinating chapter of American History when a college football coach named Walter Camp was put in charge of revving up the physical condition of Woodrow Wilson Presidential CABINET. In 1917 Camp designed a series of exercises that group of leaders had to perform.

Walter Camp from 1888 to 1892 was the head football coach at Yale. During this time, the Yale college football team Camp coached won 67 games and only lost 2 games. Camp, was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and has a prestigious award named in his honor.

The Walter Camp award, is given to the player of the year as decided by a group of FBS head coaches and sports information directors. 

Starting in 1892, Camp moved to California to become the coach of Stanford University’s football team. The first intercollegiate college football game took place between Camp’s Stanford team and the University of Chicago’s team coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg. The University of Chicago won the game 24-4.

With the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, Camp was appointed director of the U.S. Navy Training Camps’ Physical Development Program.

Disappointed by the sorry shape of most recruits, Camp devised a simple eight-minute exercise routine he called the “Daily Dozen,” a sequence of callisthenic motions including “hands, grind, crawl, wave, hips, grate, curl, weave, head, grasp, crouch and wing.”

In August 1917, Camp assembled members of President Wilson’s CABINET and other officials to get them in shape for the war. Great link including photos of Wilson’s Cabinet working out.

Among them was 35-year-old Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, who would be paralyzed by polio four years later.

Hopefully Coach WALTER CAMP is still inspiring people to exercise each day.