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Jim Thorpe - Aau Strikes Blow

In January 1913, a reporter learned that Thorpe had played baseball for pay in North Carolina a few years earlier. By the end of the month, the story broke nationwide that Thorpe was a professional athlete and should not have been allowed to compete in the Olympics. The AAU demanded a letter from Thorpe, and he sent one, drafted with Warner's help, saying he "was not wise in the ways of the world and did not realize this was wrong." He said he only played baseball because he enjoyed it, not for the money, and that he hoped the AAU and his fans would "not be too hard in judging" him. However, the unyielding AAU erased Thorpe's records from the books and asked for his medals and awards back. On Warner's advice, he returned them, and the AAU gave them to the second-place winners.

In spite of the disgrace, both national and international fans and the press were on his side throughout the ordeal. Their support helped him to go on with his career. Yet, the supposed misdeed haunted him for the rest of his life.

Related Biography: Coach Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner

"Pop" Warner was Carlisle's athletic director when nineteen-year-old Jim Thorpe began his career. Under Warner's guidance, Thorpe played his best years in football and won two gold medals in track at the 1912 Olympics.

The legend goes that Thorpe was watching the varsity track team practice the high jump. None could clear the bar, set at 5'9". Thorpe asked if he could try it, and the boys agreed. He cleared the bar on the first jump. Bob Bernotas, in his book Jim Thorpe: Sac and Fox Athlete, wrote that the next day, Warner called Thorpe into his office and said, "Do you know what you have done?" Thorpe replied, "Nothing bad, I hope." "Bad," Warner growled, "Boy, you've just broken the school record!" Warner put Thorpe on the team and assigned senior athlete Albert Exendine to train him; in time Thorpe broke all of Exendine's records.

Glenn S. Warner was born April 5, 1871, in Springville, New York. He earned a law degree from Cornell University in 1894. When Warner began playing football at Cornell, his teammates nicknamed him "Pop" because, at age 25, he was older than they were. He practiced law only briefly before beginning a lifelong career as a coach.

Warner was one of the first to use the single wingback attack and invented the double wingback formation. He is credited with developing the screen pass, reverse play, mousetrap, unbalanced line, rolling and clipping blocks, and others.

Carlisle closed in 1914, and Warner took over at the University of Pittsburgh. After nine years he joined Stanford University and became a renowned contemporary of the famed Knute Rockne, coach at Notre Dame. He went to Temple University in 1933 and then retired to Palo Alto in 1939, with a coaching record of 312 wins, 104 losses, and 32 ties in forty years. He died on September 7, 1954, at age 83.

Awards and Accomplishments

1908 Tied for first place in high jump at Penn Relays, taking home gold medal after flip of a coin
1908 Named third-team All-American by Walter Camp after first season as halfback with Carlisle Indians, who finished 10-2-1
1909 Wins six gold medals and one bronze in Lafayette-Carlisle track meet
1911 Selected first-team All-American by Camp after Carlisle Indians finish season 11-1, losing the one game by only one point
1912 Won gold medals in pentathlon and decathlon at fifth Olympiad in Stockholm, Sweden
1912 Won Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) All-Around Championship decathlon with 7,476 points, breaking old record of 7,385 points, in spite of being weakened by ptomaine poisoning and hampered by bad weather
1912 Named first-team All-American for second consecutive year after Carlisle Indians finish season 12-1-1, leading the nation in scoring, with 504 points
1920 Named first president of American Professional Football Association (APFA), which two years later was renamed National Football League (NFL)
1950 Selected by Associated Press polls as Greatest Football Player of the Half-Century and Greatest Male Athlete of the Half-Century
1951 Named to National College Football Hall of Fame
1951 Monument to Thorpe is erected in Carlisle, Pennsylvania
1953 Towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, Pennsylvania, combine and are renamed Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania
1955 NFL names its annual most valuable player award the Jim Thorpe Trophy
1958 Elected to National Indian Hall of Fame in Anadarko, Oklahoma
1961 Elected to Pennsylvania Hall of Fame
1963 Inducted as charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio; life-size statue of Thorpe adorns lobby
1966 Portrait of Thorpe painted by Charles Banks Wilson unveiled in Oklahoma State Capitol; hangs alongside portraits of U.S. Senator Robert S. Kerr, Sequoyah, and Will Rogers
1973 House in which Thorpe's family lived from 1917 to 1923, in Yale, Oklahoma, opened as historic site by Oklahoma Historical Society
1975 Enshrined in National Track and Field Hall of Fame
1975 Portion of Oklahoma Highway 51 renamed Jim Thorpe Memorial Highway
1977 Named Greatest American Football Player in History in national poll conducted by Sport Magazine
1984 U.S. Government issues Jim Thorpe postage stamp
1996 Honored by Atlantic Committee for the Olympic Games by routing the Olympic torch relay through birthplace of Prague, Oklahoma
1996-2001 Named ABC's Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Century
1999 Named America's Athlete of the Century by a resolutions of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate

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