Edward “Slip” Madigan

Class of 1915 Edward Madigan is enshrined in the College Football Hall of Fame. At Ottawa High he was the star and captain of the 1913 football team, which was Ottawa’s first unbeaten team, finishing with a record of 6-0-2. He was also an outstanding baseball player in high school. He played college football for the legendary Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, where his last season he was a teammate of George Gipp’s on Rockne’s first undefeated and untied team. After graduation from Notre Dame he coached one season at Columbia Prep in Portland, Oregon, winning a city championship with a team that a year earlier had not won a game. He then moved to the collegiate coaching ranks, taking over a floundering football program at Saint Mary’s College in California, and within six years had developed it into one of the strongest football programs on the West Coast. Though the school’s enrollment rarely exceeded 500, they became a nationally known football powerhouse, defeating teams like, USC, UCLA, California, and Stanford. In 1938 the Saint Mary Gaels were invited to play in the Cotton Bowl, defeating Texas Tech, 20-13. Edward “Slip” Madigan also coached the Iowa Hawkeyes for two years. In 1992, Sports Illustrated featured Madigan in a ten page article, noting therein that as a result of his celebrity as a football coach, he associated with President Herbert Hoover, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, and Babe Ruth, among others. The article noted also that Knute Rockne refused to schedule Saint Mary’s and that in the midst of the Great Depression, Madigan was the highest-paid football coach in the country with earnings estimated at more than $30,000 annually.