Author Tom Benjey to Display Lone Star Dietz Artifacts at Hall of Fame Induction

Author Tom Benjey will display artifacts related to Lone Star Dietz at his induction into the College Football Hall of Fame on July 20-21. Benjey will bring original artworks done by Dietz & the only surviving 1908 St. Louis Globe-Democrat spread.
 
July 17, 2012 - PRLog -- Legendary football coach William Henry “Lone Star” Dietz is being inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Friday July 20 and Saturday July 21 in South Bend, Indiana in a long overdue ceremony.

Lone Star Dietz was a teammate of Jim Thorpe on the legendary Carlisle Indian School football teams, an artist, teacher, singer, movie actor, championship dog breeder, protégé of Pop Warner, and Hall-of-Fame-worthy coach in his own right. Lone Star was the most colorful coach to have graced the sidelines and is as controversial almost 50 years after his death as he was in his prime due to his central role in the naming of the Redskins NFL team.

Lone Star Dietz is the first Carlisle Indian to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach. Six others have been inducted but as players. Dietz was selected for the Helms Foundation decades ago and has been inducted posthumously into several regional or institutional halls of fame, but this honor eluded him for decades. The closest he got previously was when the Hall chose to disregard the names of the coaches on the ballot who had received votes, change the eligibility rules after the votes had been cast, and selected two men whose names weren’t on the ballot because they weren’t eligible: Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno. Lone Star’s time has finally come.

Putting his great win-loss record aside, Lone Star Dietz should have been inducted for his contributions to football tradition and American life for a single, historic game: the January 1, 1916 Washington State College victory over Brown University. Dietz left Carlisle Indian School in 1915 to take charge of a football program that was in disarray and turned out an undefeated team without bringing in any new players. Dietz’s team was selected by the Tournament of Roses to defend the honor of the West against marauders from the East in an experimental game. After Dietz’s men vanquished the Brown’s Bruins, West Coast football was no longer considered inferior to the eastern variety, the New Year’s Day football tradition was established as was the Rose Bowl and the myriad of bowl games that followed.

More about Dietz can be found at www.LoneStarDietz.com and in his biography:

Keep A-goin’: the life of Lone Star Dietz by Tom Benjey
ISBN 0-9774486-1-4 hardback, 0-9774486-0-6 softcover
Price: $32.95 hardback, $19.95 softcover
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