Little, Lou [Luigi Piccolo]
Football
b. Dec. 6, 1893, Boston, MA
d. May 28, 1979
Although he had only five winning teams in his last twenty seasons of coaching, Little was recognized by his peers as one of the finest college coaches of his time. The problem was that he spent most of his career at Columbia University, where good football players were rare.
Little played tackle for one year at the University of Vermont, then transferred to Pennsylvania in 1916. After serving in World War I, he played at Penn again in 1919, then joined the NFL's Buffalo All-Americans for two seasons. He was one of several Buffalo players who also performed for the independent Philadelphia Quakers in 1921; the Quakers played on Saturdays, the All-Americans on Sundays.
In 1924, Little became head coach at Georgetown University and compiled a 39-12-4 record there in 6 seasons. He went to Columbia in 1930. His first seven seasons there were very successful. His teams won 43 games while losing 15 and tying 3 during that period, and his 1933 team upset Stanford 7-0 in the Rose Bowl. The winning touchdown came on a trick play, a bootleg by the fullback after a fake reverse that became famous in the newspapers as "KF-79."
After 1936, Columbia fell on hard times. The school gave no full athletic scholarships and simply couldn't keep up, even with other Ivy League schools. Little did rally the team for three seasons after World War II, winning 21 games while losing 6 from 1945 through 1947, but he had only one more winning season before retiring in 1957.
Those three years of post-war success were built on the winged-T formation, which Little designed to combine the speed of the T formation with the power of the single wing.
His last game was an 18-12 victory over Rutgers in 1956. Four players from his first team, the 1924 Georgetown squad, were in the Columbia locker room to congratulate him afterward.