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Jack Sullivan (basketball)

American basketball player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 24, 2026
Entity authorityQ8987809
Source-derived summary

John Francis Sullivan (July 27, 1935 – September 16, 2010) was an American basketball coach and labor activist.

College career

Sullivan played on the Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers men's basketball team from 1953 to 1957. His average of 25.4 points per game is still the school record. His 2,676 points is still the school record for a career. His 1,070 points in the 1957 season is still the school record for one season. With a 27–5 record in 1957, the Mountaineers earned a berth in the NCAA College Division Final Four.

Basketball playing career

In 1957, he was drafted as the 14th overall pick by the Philadelphia Warriors, but instead played for the Washington Tapers of the newly formed American Basketball League in 1961.

Coaching career

Sullivan coached boys' varsity basketball at Gonzaga College High School, then girls' varsity basketball at Academy of the Holy Names (Silver Spring, Maryland) from 1979 to 1987, and finally the women's basketball team at The Catholic University of America from 1989 to 1996.

Career outside basketball

After retiring from basketball in the early 1960s, Sullivan joined the Boston field office of the United States Secret Service as a special agent.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jack Sullivan (basketball)” is american basketball player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jack, Sullivan and basketball, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1935, 2010, 1953, 1957—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1935-07-27. For this dossier, Jack, Sullivan and basketball is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american basketball player” 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.

Evidence profile

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 Apr 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8987809. VIAF identifies the subject as 111782138. The Library of Congress control number is n91102995. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2010, 1953 and 1957.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. 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.

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.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Jack Sullivan (basketball)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Jack Sullivan (basketball) primary sources, Jack Sullivan (basketball) archive and Jack research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Jack Sullivan (basketball)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Jack Sullivan (basketball)” 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.