Leonard Raffensperger
American football player and coach
Leonard Raffensperger (November 6, 1903 – September 19, 1974) was an American football and basketball player and coach. He served as the head football coach at the University of Iowa for two seasons in 1950 and 1951, compiling a record of 5–10–3. Raffensperger played football and basketball at Iowa and then served as a high school football coach for 21 years before joining the Iowa Hawkeyes football staff as an assistant coach in 1948.
Playing career
Born in Victor, Iowa, Raffensperger did not play high school football, but he tried out for the football team at the University of Iowa and made the squad. He was a reserve lineman for coach Burt Ingwersen who did not see much playing time on the football field, though he did earn a letter with the Iowa basketball team as a sophomore in 1924–25.
Before Iowa's homecoming football game against Illinois in 1925, the Hawkeye team received a telegram from Ledrue Galloway, a talented black tackle from the 1924 team, who was fighting tuberculosis. Galloway's telegram said, "There will be twelve Iowa men on the field to beat Illinois. I am with you." Things looked bleak at first, when Red Grange returned the opening kickoff 89 yards for a touchdown. But Iowa fought back and delivered a 12–10 victory for their teammate Galloway, who died less than a year later. Raffensperger, a junior, suffered a career-ending knee injury in the game, and his playing career at Iowa was over.
The public source identifies “Leonard Raffensperger” as american football player and coach. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leonard, Raffensperger and American.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6525654. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1903, 1974, 1950 and 1951.
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This entry incorporates text from “Leonard Raffensperger” 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.