June 3

In this episode we discuss the career path of a great coach Wallace Wade, a historic day for wearing uniforms as wll as some HOF birthday memories.  We will provide you with a little bit of football nostalgia. This daily football history segment features the Great events, Franchise formation anniversaries as well as the birthdays of notable Hall of Fame players, coaches or anyone else in our great game and many more  Legendary stories of the Gridiron.

The picture in the banner above and down below in the headlines is from the US Library of Congress' collection and was contributed by Bain News Service on October 14, 1914 and is titled " Brown Men in Conference ."

According to the description on the Library of Congress, the Photograph shows a huddle of players for the Brown University football team, including: Left Guard William Wallace Wade (1892-1986) (player no. 10) and Left Tackle Walter Kenneth Sprague, (player no. 9) during the game against Cornell which was held on October 24, 1914 at the Polo Grounds (Brush Stadium) in New York city.

June 3, 1851- Though it is not totally confirmed there is a common thread that it is possible that this was the first time in U.S. history where a team wears a uniform occurred on this date in baseball when the NY Knickerbockers trotted out on to the diamond all wearing straw hats, white shirts and long blue pants. Some 30 to 40 years later this occurred in baseball it translated into the game of football in the college ranks, minus the straw hats of course.

Brown University team of 1914. Wallace Wade is Number 10. U.S. Library of Congress

June 3, 1951 The Newspapers.com Football History Headline of the Day comes from the Times-Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia when it posted:

To his “Old Boys” ...It’s Always Coach Wade!

The story tells of how former head coach of Alabama and Duke, Wallace Wade had just recently been named as the Southern Conference’s Commissioner. It is a gripping story of when the new Commish took the stage at his press conference former players from both schools were there to welcome him to his new position. Wade had fought in both World Wars and had still kept his coaching career going in a positive direction. Wallace started as a great football player at Brown University and then was inspired to coach. He was successful and impactful as from 1923 to 1930 he was the head of the Crimson Tide he led his teams to three National Championship titles per a Bleacher Report article. The Tide sported a record 61 victories, 13 loses, and 3 ties during Coach Wade’s seven seasons there. At the end of the 1930 season, Wade shocked the sports world by announcing his intention to end his solid career at the University of Alabama to try his hand at an upstart program at Duke University. Duke was not known for being anything but mediocre at football, or any other sport at that time. Not until later in life did he reveal his reason for leaving Tuscaloosa. Wade coached the Duke Blue Devils from 1931 through 1941. Then again, from 1946-1950. In 1941 the Blue Devils were 5-0 during the regular season and were named Southern Conference champions. His Duke squad was awarded the honor of playing in the 1942 Rose Bowl.
In a bizarre turn of events, because of the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Rose Bowl game was played in Duke Stadium. Duke hosted the Pacific Coast conference champion Oregon State Beavers, losing the game to a well-coached team led by another college football legend, Lon Stiner. Wade then surprisingly relinquished his coaching role and enlisted into the Army as a foot soldier but was soon promoted a couple of times to lieutenant colonel and eventually led the 272nd Field Artillery battalion in the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He was a hero and was awarded the Bronze star, four battle stars and was honored by the French government with the Croix De Guerre "Cross of War," a metal received as a high honor for heroism. After the war, Wade returned to Durham to coach the Blue Devils once again for four more years, retiring as head coach in 1950 at the age of 58. He was so respected that Duke University even named their football stadium after him, Wallace Wade Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. 

If you want to be able to be able to read through some old articles like The Times-Dispatch, you need to check out Newspapers.com. At Newspapers.com, you can get access to over 640 million pages’ worth of news from the US, Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland and more dating back from 1798 to yesterday.  Get a free one week subscription to Newspapers.com by visiting SportsHistoryNetwork.com/newspapers. And with a paid subscription, you’ll also be helping to support the production of this and other Sports History Network shows. 

June 3, 1943 - Angleton, Texas - The great defensive back from Bishop College in Dallas Texas, Emmitt Thomas celebrated his date of birth. It is hard to beleive that this 6 foot - 2 inch 192 pound player went undrafted. The Kansas City Chiefs saw his potential post draft though and signed him to their squad as a free agent in 1966. He went on to have a great career with the Chiefs franchise setting a club record with 58 career interceptions. 1969 was in particular a speical season as he led the AFL with 9 picks then followed that up by intercepting three more passes in the playoffs and one additional to cap off the magical season by adding one more in the Super Bowl IV win for Kansas City. In 1974 he had 12 interceptions, just two shy of the NFL record. He was All AFL/AFC five times and played in 5 Pro Bowl games and was All-NFL on the first or second teams in three different years of the early 1970's. Emmitt Thomas was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2008. 

June 3, 1959 - Neptune City, New Jersey - Montclair State linebacker from 1977 through the 1980 season, Sam Mills was born. I am sure standing at 5 foot - 9 inches tall that Mills had more than one person doubting that his size would prevent him from being a successful linebacker, boy were they wrong! The FootballFoundation.org informs us that Sam was a two-time First Team All-American both in 1979 and the 1980 seasons. Mills finished his career at Montclair State with a school record 501 tackles. Mills was nicknamed "The Field Mouse" and finished his career with three school records including career tackles standing at 501, tackles in a season with 142 and 22 tackles in a game.  Sam Mills received the great honor of being selected for inclusion into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2009. Sam out of college first signed with the Cleveland Browns as an undrafted free agent in 1981 but was released after the conclusion of preseason. Sam tried to play pro ball again the next year in 1982, when he signed with the Toronto Argonauts of the Canadian Football League but was released before their season. It seems that the conventional wisdom of the day felt that the prototypical linebacker needed to be at least 6 foot tall. But there was a new opportunity coming up on the horizon that would showcase Mills’ playing ability at the top levels of football, the USFL. The Browns head coach, Sam Rutigliano, who cut Mills earlier suggested to his friend and head coach of the Philadelphia Stars, Carl Peterson should give the undersized backer a shot in the new league. Peterson never regretted it as Mills became one of the cornerstones of the Stars' feared "Doghouse Defense." During that time he became known around the league for both his tenacity on the field and his leadership off it. Mills played the rugged 18 game schedule of the Philadelphia Stars in 1983 and 1984. The franchise in 1985 moved to Baltimore where the linebacker played another 18 game season. The Baltimore Stars won the 1985 USFL title, their head coach Jim Mora was signed on to coach the New Orleans Saints, and after three years playing in the USFL, Mills followed Mora to the NFL. During his tenure with the Saints, starting in 1986, Mills was an anchor of the defense. He was a member of the vaunted "Dome Patrol," the incredible linebacking corps that led the Saints defense in the early 1990s. Mills earned four Pro Bowl appearances with the Saints and later played with the Carolina Panthers. He was named to the Pro Bowl a total of  five times.  Tragically, Sam was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, and this spurred him to found the "Keep Pounding" Foundation at the Carolina Medical Center to advance cancer research in North Carolina. Sam Mills passed away in 2005 at age 45.

June 3, 1977 - Atlanta, Georgia - Matt Stinchcomb, the Georgia Bulldog tackle of the seasons of 1995 to 1998, arrived into the world. The NFF shares in Stinchcomb’s bio that he was a two-time First Team All-American as he earned consensus honors following his senior season in 1998. The big tackle also claimed the 1998 Campbell Trophy as the top football scholar-athlete in the country. Matt helped  lead Georgia to a 19-5 record during his junior and senior campaigns with respective victories in the Outback and Peach Bowls. Stinchcomb started 32 consecutive games for College Football Hall of Fame coach Jim Donnan’s Bulldogs while also claiming the Jacobs Blocking Trophy as the SEC’s most outstanding blocker in 1998. The National Football Foundation selected Matt Stinchcomb for entrance into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018. After his collegiate days were over Matt was selected  with the 18th overall selection by the Oakland Raiders in the 1999 NFL Draft. He played five seasons with the Raiders helping the team win the AFC championship in 2002 and earn a trip to Super Bowl XXXVII. He retired in 2006 following two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 

June 3, 1892- James F. Duffy was a collegiate quarterback at Colgate University and later a head coach of the University of Detroit. As the head coach of the University of Detroit, Duffy molded the program into national power house in the early 1920's.  It should be noted that he did take one year off in coaching to serve his country during World War I.

June 3, 1965- Mike Shula, yes the famous coaches son who also had some NFL coaching jobs himself, most notably as the head coach of the Cincinnatti Bengals. Mike Shula was a graduate from the University of Alabama and he even had the opportunity to serve and the school's head coach from 2003 through the 2006 season.

For more stats on football people born on June 3 check out Pro Football Reference.

See something that happened on this date that we missed? Please let us know via email at PigskinDispatch@gmail.com.