Clyde Littlefield
American football player and coach
Clyde Littlefield (October 6, 1892 – May 20, 1981) was an American sports and athletics coach. The head track and field coach at The University of Texas from 1920 to 1961 as well as its football coach from 1927 to 1933. In his 41 years at Texas, his athletic teams won 25 Southwest Conference championships and in football the Longhorns had a 44–18–6 record and won two Southwest Conference championships. He was also on the US coaching staff at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.
Early life and education
Littlefield was born in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and raised in Sistersville, West Virginia, and Southeast Texas, where he graduated from South Park High School in Beaumont. He then attended Peacock Military Academy in San Antonio and Marshall Training School, and from 1912 to 1916 was a student at the University of Texas, where he earned twelve letters, in football, basketball, and track.
Coaching career
Littlefield was head football coach at Greenville High School in Greenville for four years, and then in 1920 returned to the University of Texas as head track coach, freshman football coach, freshman basketball coach, and instructor in physical training. He remained there until 1961, winning 25 Southwest conference championships in track, and also serving as head football coach from 1927 to 1933, during which time the university won two Southwest Conference championships. He served as an instructor of an officers' training corps during World War I and was on the United States track and field coaching staff at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
He served for many years on the NCAA track and field rules committee and was president of the NCAA Track Coaches Association.
“Clyde Littlefield” enters the record as american football player and coach. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Clyde, Littlefield and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Clyde Littlefield” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Clyde, Littlefield and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5136969. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1981, 1920 and 1961.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Clyde Littlefield”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Clyde Littlefield primary sources, Clyde Littlefield archive and Clyde research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Clyde Littlefield”?
- Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Clyde Littlefield” 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.