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W. T. Cook

American college football, basketball and baseball coach (1884-1970)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ16006734
Source-derived summary

William Thomas Cook (January 1884 – 1970) was an American college sports coach. He was Davidson College's head football, men's basketball, baseball, and track and field coaches in the early 1900s. He compiled overall records of 5–9 (football), 0–1 (basketball), and 9–20 (baseball).

Cook, a native of Peru, Illinois, played on baseball and football teams in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in his early life. He eventually attended Iowa State University, playing on the school's athletic teams. Some time shortly thereafter, Cook relocated to Massachusetts where he played on a baseball team in Springfield, served as physical director at Allan's School and coached a football team in Fitchburg. After graduating from the Springfield Y.M.C.A. Training School in 1911, Cook relocated, this time to Pennsylvania to serve as physical director at another school.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “W. T. Cook” is american college football, basketball and baseball coach (1884-1970). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cook, American and college, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1884, 1970, 1911—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1884-01-01. For this dossier, Cook, American and college is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american college football, basketball and baseball coach (1884-1970)” 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

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16006734. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1884, 1970 and 1911.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. 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

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “W. T. Cook”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow W. T. Cook primary sources, W. T. Cook archive and Cook 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 “W. T. Cook”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from W. T. Cook” 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.