William Roper

William Winston Roper (August 22, 1880 – December 10, 1933) was an American football, basketball, and baseball player and coach.

He served as the head football coach at the Virginia Military Institute (1903–1904), Princeton University (1906–1908, 1910–1911, 1919–1930), the University of Missouri (1909), and Swarthmore College (1915–1916), compiling a career college football record of 112–38–18. Roper's Princeton Tigers football teams of 1906, 1911, 1920, and 1922 have been recognized as national champions, and his 89 wins are the most of any coach in the history of the program.

Roper was also the head basketball coach at Princeton for one season in 1902–03, tallying a mark of 8–7. Roper played football as an end, basketball, and baseball as an outfielder at Princeton, from which he graduated in 1902. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1951.

Roper served on the NCAA Football Rules Committee.

Coaching career

VMI Roper was the sixth head football coach at Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in Lexington, Virginia, serving for two seasons, from 1903 to 1904, and compiling a record of 5–6. Roper had planned to study medicine, but was unable to, for health reasons. While a coach at VMI, he studied law, and later in life he became qualified as an attorney. Some of the more recent honorees have included NFL football player Dennis Norman (’01), lacrosse player Ryan Boyle (‘04), Olympic and world champion fencer Soren Thompson (‘05), MLB baseball player Will Venable (‘05), squash player Yasser El Halaby ('06), and lacrosse player Peter Trombino ('07).

Political and business career In 1912, United States President Woodrow Wilson appointed Roper as the appraiser of merchandise at the Port of Philadelphia. He was later a member of the Philadelphia City Council and the local manager of the Prudential Insurance Company. As a politician, he worked successfully to repeal prohibition, though he himself was a teetotaller, and to change Pennsylvania's blue laws, which did not allow sports on Sundays.

Head coaching record Football