Blaik, "Red" (Earl H.)
Football
b. Feb. 15, 1897, Detroit, MI
d. May 6, 1988
Blaik was the first of many outstanding coaches to play football at Miami of Ohio, where he was on an undefeated team in 1916. He then won an appointment to the U. S. Military Academy, graduating in 1920.
He left the Army in 1922 and went to work for his father, but also worked as an assistant coach at the University of Wisconsin and Army. Blaik took his first head coaching job at Dartmouth in 1934, when he was thirty-seven years old. In seven seasons at Dartmouth, Blaik had a 45-15-4 record, and his 1937 team was undefeated, with 2 ties in 9 games.
One of the victories during Blaik's last season at Dartmouth, 1940, came in a game that Dartmouth had apparently lost, 7-3, when Cornell scored a touchdown on the final play. However, Cornell had been given five downs on which to score and graciously relinquished the victory. The game went down in the record books as a 3-0 Dartmouth win.
Blaik returned to Army as head coach in 1941. The school had won just 4 games in the previous two seasons; Blaik won 5 in his first year and also had a scoreless tie against a powerful Notre Dame team that won its other 8 games.
When World War II began, most other colleges were drained of players, while Army and Navy were able to build powerful teams. Led by "Doc" Blanchard and Glenn Davis, Army went undefeated from 1944 through 1946, winning 27 games and tying 1--another scoreless tie against Notre Dame.
After the war, Blaik continued to turn out fine teams. In 1948, Army won 8 and tied 1; the Cadets won all 9 of their games the following season and had an 8-1-0 record in 1950.
In the spring of 1951, scandal hit West Point. More than 50 cadets, including 37 football players, were expelled for cheating on exams. Bob Blaik, the coach's son and starting quarterback, was among them. Blaik wanted to resign, but was persuaded to stay on and rebuild the team.
It took two years, but Army was a power again in 1953 and Blaik finished his career with six consecutive winning seasons. His last team, in 1958, won 8 and tied 1 without a loss. That team used the "Lonesome End" formation, in which one end was split very wide and never entered the Cadet huddle. He was given the plays through hand signals from the quarterback.
Blaik's overall record was 166 wins, 48 losses, and 14 ties. He was named coach of the year in 1946. Nineteen of his players and assistant coaches went on to become head coaches in college or professional football.