CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Joe Kuharich

American football player and coach (1917-1981)

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 revisionSep 5, 2026
Entity authorityQ6210792 ↗
Source-derived summary

Joseph Lawrence Kuharich (April 14, 1917 – January 25, 1981) was an American professional football player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of San Francisco from 1948 to 1951, and at Notre Dame from 1959 to 1962, compiling a career college football record of 42–37. Kuharich was also the head coach of the Chicago Cardinals in 1952, the Washington Redskins from 1954 to 1958, and the Philadelphia Eagles from 1964 to 1968, achieving a career coaching record of 58–81–3 in the National Football League (NFL).

Kuharich played football as a guard at Notre Dame from 1935 to 1937 and with the Chicago Cardinals in 1940, 1941, and 1945. Kuharich died on the day the Eagles lost their first Super Bowl appearance in Super Bowl XV to the Oakland Raiders.

Early life and education

Kuharich was born April 14, 1917, in South Bend, Indiana. He played college football at Notre Dame under coach Elmer Layden, who praised Kuharich as one of the best and smartest players he ever had. In his college career. Kuharich is noted for his participation in Notre Dame's comeback over Ohio State in 1935.

Career

National Football League

Kuharich was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates (NFL) in the 12th round of the 1938 NFL draft.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Joe Kuharich” is american football player and coach (1917-1981). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kuharich, American and football, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1917, 1981, 1948, 1951—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1917-04-14. For this dossier, Kuharich, American and football is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american football player and coach (1917-1981)” 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 Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6210792. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1981, 1948 and 1951.

Critical limits

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.

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 “Joe Kuharich”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Joe Kuharich primary sources, Joe Kuharich archive and Kuharich 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 “Joe Kuharich”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Joe Kuharich” 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.