Dudley DeGroot
American football, basketball, rugby union footballer, American football, basketball, and baseball coach (1899-1970)
Dudley Sargent DeGroot (November 10, 1899 – May 5, 1970) was an American athlete and coach, primarily of American football. He served as the head coach for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League (NFL) from 1944 and 1945, tallying a mark of 14–5–1; his winning percentage of .737 is the best in franchise history for coaches with at least one full season. DeGroot was also the head football coach at Santa Barbara State College—now the University of California, Santa Barbara—from 1926 to 1927, San Jose State University (1932–1939), the University of Rochester (1940–1943), West Virginia University (1948–1949), and the University of New Mexico (1950–1952), compiling a career college football head coaching record of 117–67–9. In addition, he served as the head coach of the Los Angeles Dons of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) from 1946 to 1947.
Early life and playing career
DeGroot attended Sequoia High School in Redwood City, California. At Stanford University he competed in basketball, football, swimming, and water polo. Playing under the head coach, Pop Warner, he became the Stanford Cardinal football team captain in 1922 and their first All-American athlete. In both 1923 and 1924, DeGroot was the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America, 4A, ICAAAA, or IC4A, backstroke champion.
DeGroot was a member of the United States rugby team that won an Olympic gold medal during the 1924 competition in Paris. A journal by DeGroot about the activities of this Olympic rugby team was published throughout 23 days during July 1924 by the newspaper, The Call.
“Dudley DeGroot” enters the record as american football, basketball, rugby union footballer, American football, basketball, and baseball coach (1899-1970). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dudley, DeGroot and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Dudley DeGroot” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dudley, DeGroot and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
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 Jan 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q446520. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1899, 1970, 1944 and 1945.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dudley DeGroot” 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.