| Wins against Kentucky - 0 | Losses against Kentucky - 2 |
Alma Mater: Ohio Wesleyan [1912]
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Date Born: May 27, 1889
Date Died: February 23, 1957
Overall Record: 47-38 [6 Seasons]
| Date | Matchup | UK Result | Score | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2/19/1916 | Cincinnati at Kentucky | W | 34 - 10 | - |
| 1/14/1916 | Kentucky at Cincinnati | W | 39 - 24 | - |
Obituary - Central New Jersey Home News (February 25, 1957)
George E. Little is Dead at 67
Services to be held Tomorrow for Executive Secretary of Football Hall of Fame
Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow for George E. Little, executive secretary of the Football Hall of Fame and former athletic director of Rutgers University.
Mr. Little died Saturday night of uremic poisoning in Middlesex General Hospital where he had been a patient since Feb. 19.
The Rev. John J. Soeter of the Second Reformed Church, assisted by the Rev. Bradford Abernathy, chaplain of the university, will officiate at tomorrow's services in Kirkpatrick Chapel.
Interment will be Wednesday in Picture Rocks (Pa.) Cemetery.
One of the best-known figures in the football world as player, coach and administrator for 49 years, Mr. Little made his home at the Roger Smith Hotel.
He had been executive secretary of the Hall of Fame, with offices in Winants Hall, Rutgers, for five years; athletic director of the university for 20 years, and special assistant to Dr. Lewis Webster Jones, Rutgers president, for five years.
Mr. Little became director of the division of physical education at Rutgers University on April 15, 1932. This division of the state university encompasses physical instruction of undergraduates in all branches of the university, the professional courses in physical education and administration, and intercollegiate athletics. During World War II, it included the conditioning of Army trainees under the Army Specialized Training Program.
His illness in 1952 caused Mr. Little to give up his post as Rutgers athletic director and he then became special assistant to the university's president.
Mr. Little was born in Washington D.C. on May 27, 1889. He attended Picture Rocks (Pa.) High School and was graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1912 with the degree of Bachelor of Science. He took two years of graduate work at Ohio State University.
While an undergraduate at Ohio Wesleyan, he played varsity football for three years and was selected as an All-Ohio guard. He won three varsity track letters, was president of his sophomore class, and in his senior year was president of the student body and student senate, highest undergraduate honor.
In 1914 and 1915 he served the University of Cincinnati as head coach of football and basketball assistant track coach and assistant to the physical director. In 1916, he became head coach of football and basketball, assistant track coach, intramural assistant and instructor in agriculture at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.
He enlisted in the Student Officers Training Corps at Fort Benjamin Harrison in May, 1917, and was commissioned as an infantry captain in August of that year. He served for nine months at Camp Sherman, Ohio, and went overseas in June, 1918.
Attached to the General Expeditionary Headquarters in France, he served as an instructor in infantry tactics at the Second Corps School and saw front-line action in the Thiacout Sector.
For three months after World War I, he was director of agricultural education at Brest and was base athletic director for two additional months before leaving France. He placed fifth in the pentathlon at the Inter-Allied games at Paris in 1919.
Upon his return to the United States, Mr. Little resumed his duties at Miami University. He became director of intercollegiate athletics in 1920. In 1921, his football team won the Ohio Conference championship and his track team was first in the South Ohio Conference.
Coach at Michigan
He went to the University of Michigan in 1922 as assistant director of intercollegiate sports and director of minor sports. He was named head football coach at Michigan in 1924.
Mr. Little accepted an appointment at the University of Wisconsin in 1925 as director of physical education and head football coach. Two years later, he resigned as coach to devote his full attention to administration. His efforts were instrumental in the building of the Wisconsin field house recognized as one of the finest in the nation.
He resigned his position at Wisconsin in the fall of 1931 and accepted the call to Rutgers, reporting for duty on April 15, the following year.
Mr. Little's efforts were instrumental in the acquisition and construction of the Rutgers Stadium which is the heart of a 270-acre million dollar athletic plant on the state university campus.
Recognized as one of the nation's most beautiful stadiums, the horseshoe arena was dedicated at the Rutgers - Princeton football game on November 5, 1938, when the Scarlet defeated Princeton for the first time since they founded intercollegiate football in 1869. The stadium accommodates 23,000 spectators.
"Athletics for all" keynoted Mr. Little's activities in athletic administration. He had long been a keen advocate of extensive participation in competitive games requiring teamwork.
Under Mr. Little's direction, Rutgers had a four-year required course in physical education, when the size of the student body permitted, and currently required two years of physical or health education for all undergraduates.
More than half of the entire student body in the men's colleges of the state university participates in the program of intramural sports and more than one-fifth of the undergraduates compete in intercollegiate athletics.
Mr. Little went to Europe in the spring of 1947 as a member of a special commission sponsored by the War Department to study the physical education program in the American zone in occupied Germany. He has been the author of numerous pamphlets and articles on athletic administration.
He was secretary of the Physical Education Society of Ohio, 1919-21; representative to the Western Conference Directors Association 1925-32; chairman of the intercollegiate athletic section of the National Physical Education Assn., 1934-35, and president of the Middle Atlantic States Athletic Conference, 1939-43.
Also a member of the boxing rules committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn., 1938-41; first vice president of the New Jersey Assn. of the Amateur Athletic Union, 1939-41, and held active and allied memberships in the American Football Coaches Assn., 1921-41.
Mr. Little was second vice president of the United States Intercollegiate Lacrosse Assn. He was elected as director of the National Football Hall of Fame in 1951 and was appointed executive secretary of the Hall of Fame in January, 1952.
Outstanding Events
In 1955, Mr. Little in an interview, picked the six most outstanding events of his life:
It was in July, 1955 that Mr. Little was elected to the Hall of Fame for his football coaching activities in the third election list named by the Honors Court of the Hall of Fame.
The Honors Court at that time cited Mr. Little's record of coaching champion college teams and his administrative work in athletics.
He was inducted into the Hall of Fame at a game Nov. 5, 1955, between his alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan, and Baldwin-Wallace.
Rutgers presented Mr. Little with a special citation in recognition of his election to the Hall of Fame in special ceremonies Oct. 22, 1955, between the halves of the Rutgers-Lehigh game at Rutgers Stadium.
Representatives of Rutgers teams going back to 1905 participated in the presentation, which was made by Harry J. Rockafeller, who succeeded Mr. Little as athletic director.
Mr. Little had been a member of Alpha Tau Omega fraternity; the Exchange Club of Ann Arbor Mich.; the Rotary Clubs of Madison, Wis. and New Brunswick; Post 29 American Legion, and the Union Club of New Brunswick.
In March 1956, he received the Americanism Award of Post 133, Jewish War Veterans, for his part in intercollegiate athletics and in the establishment of the Hall of Fame.
Survivors are a sister, Mrs. D.C.; a son, George Patterson Little of Wayland, Mass., a niece, Dr. Elizabeth Markham of Washington D.C., and two granddaughters.
Mr. Little was married to the former Helen Patterson of Ohio, who is now Mrs. Joseph Hudson of Birmingham, Ala. The marriage ended in divorce.
The younger Little was in constant attendance on his father during his last illness in the hospital. A former Rutgers University student and an outstanding lacrosse player, Little was picked for Phi Beta Kappa at Rutgers in 1950.
He later was president of the student body at Harvard's School of Business Administration and since his graduation in 1952 has been a partner in the National Merchandising Co.
