Ernie Nevers

Ernest Alonzo Nevers (June 11, 1902 – May 3, 1976), nicknamed "Big Dog", was an American football and baseball player and football coach.

Widely regarded as one of the best football players in the first half of the 20th century, he played as a fullback and was a triple-threat man known for his talents in running, passing, and kicking.

By the time Nevers was born, the family had moved from New Brunswick to Willow River, Minnesota, where Nevers was born in 1902.

The family moved again to Superior, Wisconsin, where Nevers grew up and attended Superior Central High School.

In 1920, the family moved to a ranch and fruit farm in the Rincon Valley section of Santa Rosa in Sonoma County, California.

Nevers attended Santa Rosa High School for the first half of his senior year.

He led the Santa Rosa football team by scoring 108 of the team's 170 points.

After starting the basketball season for Santa Rosa, he returned to Superior early in 1921 to play for Central.

He graduated from Central that spring.

In 1921, Nevers attended Santa Rosa Junior College and was the star of the school's football team.

In a game against Petaluma, he scored four touchdowns and kicked six extra points and a field goal.

In 1922, Nevers enrolled at Stanford University.

He played for the freshman football team at fullback and halfback in the fall of 1922.

Nevers played four sports (football, basketball, baseball, and track and field) for Stanford University from 1923 to 1925 and was a consensus first-team All-American in football in 1925.

As a sophomore, Nevers became a star for the 1923 Stanford varsity football team.

He was described as "a sweet punter and a general all-around backfield star" and "the backbone of the Stanford offense."

In the final game of the 1923 season, the dedication game for California Memorial Stadium, Nevers gained more yards than the entire California team, even though Cal won the Big Game 9–0.

After the game, the Los Angeles Times wrote: "The desperate drive of Ernie Nevers . . . will go down in history as one of the greatest individual efforts ever seen on a gridiron."

At the end of the 1923 season, Nevers was selected by the United Press as the first-team All-Pacific Coast fullback.

He was also selected by Walter Camp as the third-team fullback on the 1923 College Football All-America Team.

After the 1923 football season was over, Nevers demonstrated his overall athletic ability by also starring for Stanford's basketball, baseball and track teams.

He was rated as the Pacific coast's best player in both football and basketball, the best college pitcher, one of the leading track performers, and "a crack swimmer" as well.

In April 1924, Stanford's assistant director of physical education, Harry Maloney, called Nevers "a freak genius" who also excelled in the classroom.

As a junior, Nevers was sidelined for most of the football season after suffering two broken ankles.

Under head coach Pop Warner, the 1925 Stanford football team won the Pacific Coast Conference championship with a 7–0–1 record in the regular season before losing to Notre Dame and the famous Four Horsemen backfield in the 1925 Rose Bowl.

Five days after having a cast removed from one of his ankles, Nevers played all 60 minutes of the Rose Bowl, averaged 42 yards on his punts, and carried the ball 34 times for 114 yards, only 13 yards less than all the Four Horsemen combined.

Nevers again proved to be a multi-sport star, competing for Stanford's basketball and baseball teams in the winter and spring of 1925.

A newspaper account from February 1925 stated that he was "pressing for honors as the best all around athlete in the annals of the west."

During the summer of 1925, Nevers worked for the Starrett Meat Company in Guerneville, California, and pitched for the town's baseball team.

As a senior, Nevers and Pop Warner led the 1925 Stanford football team to a 7–2 record.

At the end of the 1925 season, Nevers was a consensus All-American, receiving first-team honors from, among others, the All-America Board, the Associated Press, Collier's Weekly, the International News Service, Liberty magazine, the Newspaper Enterprise Association, and Athlete & Sportsman magazine.

He played professional football in the National Football League (NFL) for the Duluth Eskimos in 1926 and 1927 and the Chicago Cardinals from 1929 to 1931.

Nevers also played professional baseball as a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns of the American League from 1926 to 1928 and the Mission Bells of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) in 1928 and 1929.

Nevers also had a long career as a football coach, including stints with the Stanford Indians (assistant, 1928, 1932–1935), the Chicago Cardinals (head coach, 1930–1931, 1939), Lafayette Leopards (head coach, 1936), Iowa Hawkeyes (assistant, 1937–1938), and the Chicago Rockets (assistant, 1946).

Nevers' parents, George and Mary Ann Nevers, were immigrants to the United States from New Brunswick, Canada.

In addition to Ernie, they had five sons (Harry, Frank, John, George, and Arthur) and one daughter (Edith).

In 1929, one week after defeating the Dayton Triangles, who were playing in their final game before moving to Brooklyn to embark on their long and tenuous history through the league, he set an NFL record that still stands by scoring 40 points in a single game.

He was inducted with the inaugural classes of inductees into both the College Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.

He was also named in 1969 to the NFL 1920s All-Decade Team.

In the same game he subsequently set another NFL record by scoring six rushing touchdowns in a single game against the Chicago Bears, a record that remained unequaled until the 2020 season in which New Orleans Saints running back Alvin Kamara also accomplished the feat, scoring six touchdowns against the Minnesota Vikings on Christmas Day.