October 3, 1902 – Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf was a coach who transformed programs into winners. The National Football Foundation shares its story with us. It explains that Pappy started his coaching career at Oklahoma City, which, before his arrival, had won only one game in three seasons. In their first year with Coach Waldorf, the team had 5 “W”s; after year two, they notched another 8 wins. In 1928, he spent time as an assistant at Kansas, and then the following season took the reins once more, coaching Oklahoma State, which had a dismal 1-7 record in 1928. During the 1929-1935 campaigns with Pappy at the helm, the team compiled a 34-10-7 record and won all four Missouri Conference Championships, never losing to rival Oklahoma.
1934 was another year of movement, and Waldorf took over a Kansas State University program that had never won a championship. That same year, Pappy guided them to the Big 6 Title! In the 1935 season at Northwestern, the team went 4-3-1, but one win came against a very talented Notre Dame team, earning Pappy Waldorf the Coach of the Year Awardβthe first time the honor was bestowed. The following season, the Wildcats won the Big 10 Conference. He left there after 12 brilliant seasons to coach at California University on the West Coast. Cal hadn’t seen a winning season in 8 years, but in Pappy’s first year, they went 9-1 and won the Pacific Coast Conference. The man had a knack for building programs, and the National Football Foundation recognized it by inducting Pappy Waldorf into its College Football Hall of Fame in 1966.
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