Bill Reid (American football coach)
American football player and coach, baseball player (1878-1976)
William Thomas Reid Jr. (October 25, 1878 – September 28, 1976) was an American football player and coach of Harvard's football team for the 1901, 1905, and 1906 seasons. Though his goal was to produce winning teams, mounting injuries and intensifying criticism of the game fueled demands for its abolition and pressured Reid into a leadership role in the momentous 1906 rule changes which defused this threat. He was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1970.
Early life and playing career
Reid was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, where his father, W. T. Reid, was the head of a prep school. When he decided to attend Harvard University, he exhibited such athletic promise that he was actively recruited by both the football and baseball teams. He immediately proved himself to be an outstanding baseball catcher, starting his freshman year and then serving as captain of the university's championship teams his junior and senior years. In football, he started at fullback his sophomore year and scored two touchdowns in Harvard's momentous 1898 victory over Yale, its first since the initial meeting of the teams in 1875. Though injuries constrained his involvement with football over the following two seasons, the Boston Transcript later characterized him, in its account of his wedding, as "one of the best athletes that ever came out [of Harvard]."
Harvard football coach
Following his graduation, Reid was appointed student coach of the football team, a long-standing practice whereby early teams selected a graduate player from the previous season to be its coach. Reid's 1901 team went undefeated and crushed Yale 22–0 in its final game.
The public source identifies “Bill Reid (American football coach)” as american football player and coach, baseball player (1878-1976). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bill, Reid and American.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4910615. VIAF identifies the subject as 48435343. The Library of Congress control number is n93023380. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1878, 1976, 1901 and 1905.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bill Reid (American football coach)” 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.