Jack Meagher
American football player and coach, basketball coach, baseball coach, college athletics administrator (1896-1968)
John Francis Meagher (July 5, 1894 – December 7, 1968) was an American football player, coach of football, basketball, and baseball, and college athletics administrator.
Meagher played football for the University of Notre Dame in 1916, rising to a second-team end under then-assistant coach, Knute Rockne. He served with the United States Marines in France during World War I and played in four games with the Chicago Tigers in 1920, the first year of the National Football League (NFL).
Meagher embarked on a career in coaching in 1921 at St. Edward's University, where he served as head football coach from 1921 to 1928, compiling a record of 24–21–4, and as head basketball coach from 1921 to 1924. From 1929 to 1933, he coached football at Rice University, where he compiled a 26–26 record. From 1934 to 1942, he was the head football coach at Auburn University, where he compiled a 48–37–10 record. Shug Jordan was his assistant coach. During his nine seasons coaching the Auburn Tigers, they played in their first bowl game ever, the Bacardi Bowl. The game was held in Havana, Cuba.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jack Meagher” is american football player and coach, basketball coach, baseball coach, college athletics administrator (1896-1968). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jack, Meagher and American, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “american football player and coach, basketball coach, baseball coach, college athletics administrator (1896-1968)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
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 Mar 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6114061. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1894, 1968, 1916 and 1920.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Jack Meagher” 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.