Overview

This book details the life of Percy Haughton, college football’s first modern coach. A true innovator of the game, his Harvard squads went 71-7-5 during his tenure and were deemed national champions three times. In many ways, college football in the 1910s resembled what we still see today. A half century old, there were already concerns about violence and corruption. There were skyrocketing coaches’ salaries, stadium arms races, bragging rights, and meddling boosters. There were recruiting excesses and cheating. And from Harvard coach Percy Duncan Haughton, there was a sophistication of football that would surprise many fans today. In The Coach Who Strangled the Bulldog: How Harvard's Percy Haughton Beat Yale and Reinvented Football, Dick Friedman tells the fascinating story of a football genius. The sport’s first modern coach, Haughton systematized the game and utilized passing, speed, and deception. In nine seasons at Harvard, Haughton’s squads went 71-7-5 and three times during his tenure the Crimson were deemed national champions. Haughton’s system perfected line blocking, employed tactics such as the delayed handoff, and eschewed huddles. His practices were scripted to the minute and he had revolutionary ideas on conditioning. The Coach Who Strangled the Bulldog is not only a captivating biography of an influential coach from the early days of college football; it is also a history of the sport itself. Featuring timeless photos and tirelessly researched, this book provides valuable insight into the game today—how it has evolved and how it has stayed surprisingly the same.

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9781493049097

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Reviews

Mr. Friedman does an excellent job of tracing the history of Coach Haughton.... [T]his book was a great historical read of that time frame of the game and the intense rivalry between Harvard and Yale. I recommend it for any football library.--Gridiron Greats Friedman captures the beginning of Big Time Football in America in a colorful and interesting read about a Harvard football legend.--Tim Murphy, head coach, Harvard football With wit and grace, Dick Friedman conjures a vanished era of American football, when young men bereft of helmets drop-kicked four-point field goals, Harvard bestrode the gridiron like colossi, and the redoubtable Percy Haughton midwifed the modern game into existence. If the Harvard coach has largely been forgotten, The Coach Who Strangled the Bulldog restores him to his proper place alongside Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and Walter Camp as a giant of a golden age. This is a masterly account, persuasive and entertaining.--Steve Rushin, Sports Illustrated columnist and author of Sting-Ray Afternoons This timely book will have a broad appeal--even more so than it would have just a few years ago due to the recent controversies surrounding the modern game. From medical issues and concern over violence to corruption and astronomical head coaching salaries, this book touches on many of the problems that plague the game today, only excluding political protests. It provides a detailed biography of Percy Haughton--the football genius and Harvard coach--as well as a history of the sport he so dearly loved through some of its defining early moments. Haughton made many game-changing contributions to the sport's modern incarnation in the early 20th century during his career as an Ivy League coach--first at Cornell but most prominently at Harvard. Friedman, a sports journalist, is not a scholar in the traditional sense, but there seems to be no other sports historian that could have written such a detailed and thorough account, documenting both the history of football and the person who arguably changed the game. Ultimately, this book is a fun and engaging read.--CHOICE

Author Information

Dick Friedman is the football correspondent and contributing editor for Harvard Magazine. He worked for four decades as an editor and writer at People, TV Guide, and Sports Illustrated. At SI he covered the NBA, baseball, college basketball, and golf. Friedman also helped edit several of SI’s coffee-table books, including on pro and college football, and was a contributor to College Football’s Best (2016). Since 2014 Friedman has been a contributor to SI’s sister publication Golf Magazine.

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