Cleve Abbott
American sports coach, athletics administrator, educator (1894–1955)
Cleveland Leigh "Cleve" Abbott (December 9, 1894 – April 14, 1955) was an American college football and college basketball coach, athletics administrator, and educator. He was the head coach of the Tuskegee Golden Tigers football team from 1923 to 1954.
Early life, education, and military service
Abbott was born in Yankton, South Dakota in 1894, one of seven children to Albert B. (aka Elbert) Abbott (1862–1952) and Mollie Brown Abbott (1868–1909). He graduated from high school in Watertown, South Dakota. Abbott received his bachelor's degree in 1916 from South Dakota State College (SDSC)—now known as South Dakota State University—in Brookings, South Dakota. He was an outstanding, multi-sport athlete at Watertown High School (16 varsity sports letters) and South Dakota State (14 varsity letters).
Abbott joined the United States Army in 1917 at Camp Dodge, and served in Europe in World War I as an officer in the 366th Infantry Regiment
Coaching career
After being mustered out of military service in 1919, Abbott taught at Kansas Industrial and Educational Institute—later known as Kansas Technical Institute—in Topeka, Kansas. In 1923, Abbott accepted a position as athletic director, professor, and coach at Tuskegee. Abbott was the eighth head football coach for the Tuskegee University Golden Tigers located in Tuskegee, Alabama and he held that position for 32 seasons, from 1923 until 1954. Abbott earned the respect of his peers through his team's performance and by participating in national committees for the selection of "all-American" players at the collegiate level.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cleve Abbott” 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.