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Jim Thorpe

Greatest Football Season



The year 1912 brought Thorpe not only two Olympic gold medals, but it proved to be his greatest football season as well. He helped the Carlisle Indians to a season finish of 12-1-1. The team set a national record, scoring 504 points and allowing only 114. Thorpe scored 198 of those 504 points, setting an all-time record. Camp again named him a first-team all-American.



In a November 1912 game against the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, future five-star general and U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower played halfback and faced Thorpe. Bernotas wrote that Eisenhower later recalled, "On the football field there was no one like him in the world. Against us he dominated all of the action.… I personally feel no other athlete possessed his all-around abilities in games and sports."

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Famous Sports StarsFootballJim Thorpe Biography - Beginning On The Bright Path, Carlisle Indian, The 1912 Olympics, Chronology, Greatest Football Season - SELECTED WRITINGS BY THORPE: