By Darin Hayes We’re going to go to September 13, 1898. Our feature person of the day is Glenn Killinger. He was a former Penn State University quarterback.
Killinger’s Early Years in Football
As World War I broke out, Killinger was informed that at 17 years of age, he was too young to enlist in the US Army, so instead, he enrolled at Penn State in the Metallurgical Engineering program. While at the school, he met a very influential person in his life, Coach Hugo Bezdek. Bezdek was quite an accomplished athlete in his own right.
We’ll get much more into detail on him on his birthday. April 1. The player and the coach clicked. Bezdek molded the young Glenn Killinger into a fine quarterback and a great baseball player, too.
Killinger earned nine letters altogether in athletics at Penn State, three for football, three for baseball, and three for basketball. During the 1921 gridiron season, Walter Camp selected the great broken field runner, the quarterback of the first team All-American Football Players.
The highly regarded sports writer Grantland Rice described Killinger as one of the best running quarterbacks. Legendary coaches Pop Warner and John Heisman compared him to Jim Thorpe for being one of the most incredible multi-sport athletes in America.
Killinger Beyond the College Game
After graduation, Killinger played professional football in the NFL with the Canton Bulldogs and the New York Giants, as well as with the first AFL’s Philadelphia Quakers. The athletic Killinger also played minor League baseball for 10 years and had a stint in the big leagues with the New York Yankees.
Somehow, he also managed to fit in, serving as the head football coach at Dickinson College in 1922, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 1927 to 1931, Moravian College in 1933, and Westchester University from 1934 through 1959, except for the 1944 season, and also at North Carolina Flight School in 1944. His career college coaching record was a remarkable 176 wins, 72 losses, and 16 ties.
Glenn found the time to coach some college baseball and basketball, as well as being a minor league baseball manager to boot. The National Football Foundation selected him to go into the College Football Hall of Fame in their 1971 induction ceremony.