Hinkey, Frank A.
Football
b. Dec. 23, 1871, Tonawanda, NY
d. Dec. 30, 1925
Hinkey was an All-American end at Yale four years in a row, 1891 through 1893, but he was one of the strangest and least likely of football stars. At 5-foot-9 and only 157 pounds, he was small even for his era. As a child, he'd been told to refrain from strenuous sports because of lung trouble and he was described as "cadaverous looking" by one writer.
Yet Hinkey was the most feared player of his day. On defense, he seemed impossible to block. Walter Camp wrote that Hinkey "drifted through the interference like a disembodied spirit." He was a ferocious tackler who clasped the ball-carrier around the knees, lifted him into the air, and threw him headfirst to the ground.
One opponent said that Hinkey "played like a fiend, but played clean." Other opponents and many sportswriters disagreed. After the brutal 1894 Harvard-Yale game, the New York Post said that "no father or mother worthy the name would permit a son to associate with the set of Yale brutes on Hinkey's football team," and Harvard refused to play Yale the following year.
Because of Hinkey's reputation, other teams tried to retaliate, often ganging up on him. But he had to leave a game because of injury only once, and it was the only game Yale lost during his four years as a starter.
Hinkey became the head coach at Yale in 1914 and installed a lateral passing offense derived from Canadian Rugby. Yale went 7-3-0 that year. After a poor start the following season, Hinkey was replaced by Tom Shevlin.