Bert Coan
American football player (1940–2022)
Elroy Bert Coan III (July 2, 1940 – February 19, 2022) was an American professional football player. He is most notable because of his extraordinary speed (9.4 in the 100-yard dash) and size (6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), 220 lb (100 kg)).
Career
Coan was the central figure in a dispute over the 1960 college football game between the University of Kansas Jayhawks and the University of Missouri Tigers, the second-longest-running rivalry in college football (known as the "Border War").
Coan played for Kansas – and helped the Jayhawks win the 1960 game by a score of 23–7 over Missouri, then-ranked #1. After the Kansas Athletic Department delayed the hearing for over a year, on December 8, 1960 the Big Eight declared Coan ineligible due to a recruiting violation by Bud Adams while Coan was still at Texas Christian University (TCU) and forfeited the game to Missouri—thus erasing Missouri's only loss on the field that year. Missouri counts the 1960 game as a win by forfeit, thus giving it the only undefeated and untied season in school history. The Big Eight also credited the 1960 game to Missouri. However, Kansas (and the NCAA) count the game as a Kansas victory. Ever since, the two universities have disputed the overall win–loss record in the long-running series.
Coan went on to play in 72 games in seven seasons in the American Football League; the first season with the San Diego Chargers, and the rest with the Kansas City Chiefs.
The public source identifies “Bert Coan” as american football player (1940–2022). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bert, Coan and American.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4895007. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1940, 2022 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bert Coan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.