Type | Private university |
---|---|
Established | 1972 |
Academic affiliations | NAICU [1] |
Chairman | Robert M. Goldman |
President | Steve Condon |
Location | , , United States |
Nickname | America's Sports University |
Mascot | Sammy the Eagle |
Website | www |
The United States Sports Academy is a private university focused on sports and located in Daphne, Alabama. It offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs as well as certificate programs. Founded in 1972, the academy has provided its sports programs to more than 60 countries around the world.
Thomas P. Rosandich founded the academy in 1972 in response to an inferior performance by the United States Olympic team in the 1972 Summer Olympics. Athletes were lacking quality coaching and training. The academy's programs served as an education resource to upgrade coaching through instruction, research, and service.
Steve Condon, a longtime chancellor, university president, collegiate athletics director, coach, professor, and higher education leader, was selected as the third President and CEO at the United States Sports Academy at the end of 2022. [2]
The academy's campus is also home to the American Sport Art Museum and Archives (ASAMA), which was founded in 1984. The collection contains more than 1,000 works of sport art from world-renowned artists, many of whom have been honored by the academy as Sport Artist of the Year. The academy is also developing an outdoor sculpture park on campus, which is dedicated to celebrating sport with the erection of numerous environmentally friendly sculptures.
The academy also hosts the Awards of Sport series, also known as its tribute to "The Artist and the Athlete". These awards honor sports figures for their accomplishments and achievements in such things as performance, humanitarian activities, fitness, and media.
The Amos Alonzo Stagg Coaching Award [3] is presented each year, for the preceding calendar year. It was first presented in 1985, for the 1984 sports year. Each recipient receives the USSA's Order of the Eagle Exemplar medal and Academy Rosette. [4] For list of awardees through 2014, see footnote [5]
There is also a separate Amos Alonzo Stagg Award presented by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA).
The Carl Maddox Sport Management Award is presented each year. It was first presented in 1991. [6]
James Naismith was a Canadian-American physical educator, physician, Christian chaplain, and sports coach, best known as the inventor of the game of basketball. After moving to the United States, he wrote the original basketball rule book and founded the University of Kansas basketball program in 1898. Naismith lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as the birth of the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Tournament (1939).
Amos Alonzo Stagg was an American athlete and college coach in multiple sports, primarily American football. He served as the head football coach at the International YMCA Training School (1890–1891), the University of Chicago (1892–1932), and the College of the Pacific (1933–1946), compiling a career college football record of 314–199–35 (.605). His undefeated Chicago Maroons teams of 1905 and 1913 were recognized as national champions. He was also the head basketball coach for one season at Chicago (1920–1921), and the Maroons' head baseball coach for twenty seasons.
Michael William Krzyzewski, nicknamed "Coach K", is an American former college basketball coach. He served as the head coach at Duke University from 1980 to 2022, during which he led the Blue Devils to five national titles, 13 Final Fours, 15 ACC tournament championships, and 13 ACC regular season titles. Among men's college basketball coaches, only UCLA's John Wooden has won more NCAA championships (10). Krzyzewski is widely regarded as one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time.
Sandra Kay Yow was an American basketball coach. She was the head coach of the NC State Wolfpack women's basketball team from 1975 to 2009. A member of the Naismith Hall of Fame, she had more than 700 career wins. She also coached the U.S. women's basketball team to an Olympic gold medal in 1988 despite having been diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987. In 2000, Yow was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame. In 2009, she was inducted into the FIBA Hall of Fame.
Herbert Orin "Fritz" Crisler was an American college football coach who is best known as "the father of two-platoon football", an innovation in which separate units of players were used for offense and defense. Crisler developed two-platoon football while serving as head coach at the University of Michigan from 1938 to 1947. He also coached at the University of Minnesota (1930–1931) and Princeton University (1932–1937). Before coaching, he played football at the University of Chicago under Amos Alonzo Stagg, who nicknamed him Fritz after violinist Fritz Kreisler.
Amos Alonzo Stagg Field is the name of two successive football fields for the University of Chicago. Beyond sports, the first Stagg Field (1893–1957), named for famed coach, Alonzo Stagg, is remembered for its role in a landmark scientific achievement of Enrico Fermi and the Metallurgical Laboratory during the Manhattan Project. The site of the first artificial nuclear chain reaction, which occurred within the field's west viewing-stands structure, received designation as a National Historic Landmark on February 18, 1965. On October 15, 1966, which is the day that the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was enacted creating the National Register of Historic Places, it was added to that as well. The site was named a Chicago Landmark on October 27, 1971.
Vincent Joseph Dooley was an American college football coach. He was the head coach of the Georgia Bulldogs from 1964 to 1988, as well as the University of Georgia's (UGA) athletic director from 1979 to 2004. During his 25-year head coaching career, Dooley compiled a 201–77–10 record. His teams won six Southeastern Conference (SEC) titles and the 1980 national championship. After the 1980 season, Dooley was recognized as college football's "Coach of the Year" by several organizations.
Amos Alonzo Stagg Memorial Stadium, previously known as Pacific Memorial Stadium, was a 28,000-seat outdoor multi-purpose stadium in the western United States, located on the campus of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. The home venue of the Pacific Tigers was constructed in 1950 for football and later hosted women's soccer; it was closed in 2012 and demolished two years later.
Amos Alonzo Stagg High School, Stagg, or AAS, is a public four-year high school located at the intersection of S. Roberts Rd. and W. 111th Street in Palos Hills, Illinois, a southwest suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. It is part of Consolidated High School District 230, which also includes Victor J. Andrew High School and Carl Sandburg High School.
Herman James Stegeman was a player and coach of American football, basketball, baseball, and track and field athletics, and a college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Beloit College (1915), Monmouth College (1916–1917), and the University of Georgia (1920–1922), compiling a career college football coaching record of 29–17–6. At Georgia, Stegeman was also the head basketball coach (1919–1931), head baseball coach (1919–1920), and head track and field coach (1920–1937).
Gerald B. Zornow was an American business executive and former president and chairman of the board of Eastman Kodak Company. He was also a professional baseball player and a hall of fame college football player.
The Amos Alonzo Stagg Award is presented annually by the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) to the "individual, group or institution whose services have been outstanding in the advancement of the best interests of football". Recipients receive a plaque which is a replica of the one given to Stagg at the 1939 AFCA Convention in tribute to his 50 years of service to football. The purpose of the award is "to perpetuate the example and influence of Amos Alonzo Stagg".
Clyde Littlefield was an American sports and athletics coach. The head track and field coach at The University of Texas from 1920 to 1961 as well as its football coach from 1927 to 1933. In his 41 years at Texas, his athletic teams won 25 Southwest Conference championships and in football the Longhorns had a 44–18–6 record and won two Southwest Conference championships. He was also on the US coaching staff at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.
Carl Maddox was the athletics director of Louisiana State University (1968–1978) and Mississippi State University (1979–1983). The Carl Maddox Field House at LSU is named after him along with the Carl Maddox Track and Field Complex at Mississippi State.
George Marshall Varnell was an American track and field athlete, Gonzaga University's first basketball coach, a college football player, coach, and official, who refereed a record-setting eight Rose Bowl games, and sports editor of two major Pacific Northwest newspapers. He competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics, finishing fourth in the 200 meter hurdles event as well as fourth in the 400 meter hurdles competition. Varnell served as the referee during the 1919 Rose Bowl between Oregon and Harvard, as well as at seven other Rose Bowl games.
The Northern Michigan Wildcats are the athletic teams that represent Northern Michigan University, located in Marquette, Michigan, in NCAA intercollegiate sporting competitions. All teams that play under NCAA governance compete at the Division II level, with three exceptions. The most significant one is the men's ice hockey program, which plays at the Division I level. Two other sports, Nordic skiing and women's wrestling, are de facto Division I sports; the NCAA holds a single skiing championship open to members of all three divisions, and does not currently include women's wrestling in its divisional structure. While NMU's skiing program includes both disciplines contested in the NCAA championships, only the Nordic program competes within the NCAA structure.
Walter E. Marks was an American football, basketball, and baseball player, coach, college athletics administrator, sports official, and university instructor. Marks played football, basketball, and baseball at the University of Chicago. Between 1927 and 1955 he served as the head football, basketball, baseball, and golf coach at Indiana State University, with hiatuses from 1930 to 1931, when he earned a master's degree at Indiana University, and from 1942 to 1945, when he served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Marks was best known for his football and baseball coaching career(s); though his tenure as basketball coach was highlighted by the Sycamores' run to the semifinals of the 1936 U.S. Olympic Trials.
The Pacific Tigers football team represented the University of the Pacific in NCAA Division I-A college football. The team competed in the Big West Conference during their last season in 1995. They played their home games at Stagg Memorial Stadium in Stockton, California. On December 19, 1995, the Board of Regents voted to disband the team in order to save money for the athletic program, which was reported to have gone over $400,000 in debt. All scholarships were honored for current players of the team.
Amos Alonzo "Lonnie" Stagg Jr., sometimes called Young Stagg, was an American football player and coach of college football and basketball.
Frederick William Luehring was an American football, basketball, baseball, and swimming coach college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin from 1906 to 1909, compiling a record of 20–3–1. Luehring was the head basketball coach at Ripon from 1906 to 1910 and at Princeton University from 1913 to 1920, amassing a career college basketball coaching mark of 125–61.