Franklin Cappon

Franklin C. "Cappy" Cappon (October 17, 1900 – November 29, 1961) was an American college football and college basketball player and coach. He played football and basketball at Phillips University and the University of Michigan and coached at Luther College (1923–1924), the University of Kansas (1926–1927), the University of Michigan (1925, 1928–1938), and Princeton University (1938–1961).

The son of a wealthy leather manufacturer in Holland, Michigan, Cappon was a star athlete in both basketball and football, and was named to All-Western football teams in 1920, 1921, and 1922. Before accepting a position at Princeton, Cappon was an assistant athletic director and basketball coach at Michigan from 1928 to 1938. In 23 years at Princeton, Cappon won five Ivy League championships, and his trademark "five-man weave" offense became closely identified with the program. He was a mentor at Princeton to a generation of student-athletes, including Butch van Breda Kolff, Bill Bradley and Frank Deford. Cappon died at age 61 of a heart attack in the showers at Princeton's Dillon Gymnasium after a basketball practice session.

Youth in Holland, Michigan Cappon was born and raised in Holland, Michigan. Cappon was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Cappon. His parents were both born in the Netherlands. His father, Isaac Cappon, came to Holland at age 17 and opened a tannery business that became one of Holland's largest companies, the Cappon-Bertsch Leather Co. Cappon and his four sisters As a senior, Cappon led the 1917 Holland High School team to a series of extraordinary wins, beating Fennville (127–0), Kalamazoo High (60–0), Grand Haven (81–0), Benton Harbor (90–0), Grand Rapids Union (32–3), Traverse City (20–7) and Western State Normal (104–9), but losing to Grand Rapids Central (20–0).

Cappon later spoke about his early memories of oyster stew banquets, players shoveling snow off the football field and then marking it out, "dinky basketball floors" and their individual hazards, and the first state basketball tournament in 1916 when 40 teams entered a "free for all." When Cappon graduated from high school in 1918, he was persuaded to join his brother-in-law at Phillips. Maulbetsch's team was undefeated in 1918 and lost only one game in 1919.

University of Michigan After one or two years at Phillips, Cappon returned to his home state and enrolled at the University of Michigan. and was named to Walter Eckersall's All-Western team at the end of the 1920 season. In recognition of his versatility on the line and in the backfield, one expert placed Cappon on his 1921 All-Western team as a tackle, and another named him as a second-team All-Western halfback. He was named a second-team All-Western fullback, and Walter Eckersall named Cappon as "general utility man" for his All-Western team. Goebel added: "If Cappy hadn't played all the positions he'd a been an All-American in one or two of them."

Cappon also starred as a guard on the Michigan basketball team in 1921 and 1922.

College coach Luther In the fall of 1923, Cappon became the football coach for Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. After the football season, he returned to Michigan for the spring semester and received his degree in 1924. In Cappon's two seasons as the football coach, the Luther teams had a record of 8–4–3.

Assistant to Fielding H. Yost In February 1925, Cappon was hired by Fielding H. Yost to return to Michigan as part of the school's football coaching staff. While at Michigan in 1925 and 1926, Cappon was also an instructor in Michigan's coaching school and assisted Michigan basketball coach E. J. Mather. According to a 1940 history of football at the University of Kansas, Cappon resigned after two years at Kansas as the result of a controversy over "scouting." The Missouri Valley conference schools had agreed "not to 'scout' each other in the belief that such a practice was unsportsmanlike." After Kansas beat Missouri 14–7 with a new passing attack and "impregnable defense," Missouri produced evidence to show that Kansas supporters, not part of the Kansas staff, had acted as "volunteer scouts" at Missouri games and had provided Cappon with "charts of the Tiger plays," that enabled Cappon to develop new schemes to stop the Missouri offense. From 1931 to 1938, he was the head basketball coach and assistant athletic director at Michigan.

In February 1938, the University of Michigan hired Fritz Crisler from Princeton to replace Harry Kipke as football coach and Cappon as assistant athletic director. Although no formal announcement was made, appointment of Crisler as assistant athletic director "aroused some speculation as to the status of Franklin C. Cappon," and it was reported that the tenure of Cappon as assistant athletic director had come to an end. The following month, Cappon accepted a position with Princeton as its head basketball coach and assistant football coach under Princeton's head coach Tad Wieman.

Princeton basketball coach In 1938, Cappon was hired by Princeton University as its head basketball coach. With the exception of three years serving in the Navy during World War II, and the ends. He was assigned to St. Mary's Pre-Flight School in Moraga, California. Cappon missed the 1943–1944 through 1945–1946 basketball seasons while serving in the Navy. Cappon was a lieutenant in the Naval Aviation fitness program, where he wrote training texts and directed athletics for the fleet airwing on the West Coast.

At Princeton, Cappon became known for two trademarks. The first was the "Iron Five," his practice of picking the five best players and playing them without substitution in every game. The second was the "five-man weave" offense. Edwards described Cappon's physical appearance this way: "In 1959, the fall I arrived at Princeton, Cappy was in peak form, a character who knew he was a character. He was in his early sixties, and his body looked as if it had been sculpted in ice cream and left in the sun. He was bald, the skin on his face drooped, he had deep shadows under his eyes. His voice was gravelly, and he enunciated as if he had wads of Kleenex in his mouth. He always said exactly what he meant, and his language was delightfully salty. Legend had it that he had been a great athlete at Michigan, but by the 1960s no one could imagine that. He was grumpily personable and totally without pretension." Deford later wrote the following about Cappon:"In a profession in which men are renowned for their behavior during a basketball game, Cappy Cappon stood quite by himself among coaches. Until the game was over, the man never did anything but frown. There were degrees of frowning, of course, but his gamut of expression seldom ventured too far from that of a basic frown. A mournful frown, a disinterested frown, and if it was possible – and it was – a frown of satisfaction. . . . And when something happened that there wasn't a frown to express completely, Cappy would cup his hands or rise to his feet and bellow the words: `What'rya doin' out there?' When the game was over, the frown would stay quite in place if Princeton lost. But if they won, he would finally smile just a bit, a smile that looked both modest and embarrassed."

In 1957, Cappon was inducted into the Helms Foundation College Basketball Hall of Fame. and he was hospitalized again for two weeks in the summer of 1961 with an occlusion in an artery of his left arm. Donovan called for help, and when Cappon's doctor arrived ten minutes later, he found Cappon dead on the floor.

As word of Cappon's death spread around the Princeton campus, it became "one of the saddest days in the lives of anyone connected with Princeton sports in those years," a moment which some compared to the day two years later when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Future U.S. Senator Bill Bradley was a freshman basketball player at the time. One of his teammates found Bradley sitting alone at the Princeton Student Center eating a pint of ice cream after learning of Cappon's death. With a dazed look of grief, Bradley noted, "The two people who brought me here are gone," referring to Cappon and Princeton's director of admissions who had recently retired. In his profile of Cappon, Selden Edwards noted that he'd "never been able to get that image from my mind, of the two naked old men on the tile floor, Silent Ed cradling Cappy Cappon in his arms. Something out of Michelangelo."

Cappon's funeral was held at Princeton University Chapel.

Head coaching record Football

Basketball