Angus Gerald "Gus" Goetz (July 6, 1897 – July 24, 1977) was an

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team with ...

player who played four years with the

Michigan Wolverines The Michigan Wolverines comprise 29 varsity sports teams at the University of Michigan. These teams compete in the NCAA's Division I and in the Big Ten Conference in all sports except women's water polo, which competes in the NCAA inter-divisio ...

from 1917 to 1920. He also played professional football for the

Buffalo All-Americans Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under multiple names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s. The early NFL-era franchise was variously called the Buffalo All-Stars from ...

(1922) and the

Columbus Tigers The Columbus Panhandles were a professional American football team based in Columbus, Ohio. The club was founded in 1901 by workers at the Panhandle shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad. They were a part of the Ohio League from 1904 before fol ...

(1923).

College career

A native of

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Sault Ste. Marie ( ') is the only city in, and county seat of, Chippewa County, Michigan, Chippewa County in the U.S. state of Michigan. With a population of 13,337 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the second-most populated ...

, Goetz graduated from Sault Area High School in 1915 and went on to study medicine and play football at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. Goetz played varsity football at

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

for four years from

1917 Events Below, the events of World War I have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 9 – WWI – Battle of Rafa: The last substantial Ottoman Army garrison on the Sinai Peninsula is captured by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force's ...

1920 Events January * January 1 ** Polish–Soviet War in 1920: The Russian Red Army increases its troops along the Polish border from 4 divisions to 20. ** Kauniainen, completely surrounded by the city of Espoo, secedes from Espoo as its own ma ...

. He started nine games as a left

end End, END, Ending, or variation, may refer to: End *In mathematics: ** End (category theory) ** End (topology) **End (graph theory) ** End (group theory) (a subcase of the previous) **End (endomorphism) *In sports and games **End (gridiron footbal ...

in his freshman year and moved to the left tackle position in his sophomore, junior and senior years. Goetz was a star for at tackle on the undefeated

1918 Michigan Wolverines football team The 1918 Michigan Wolverines football team represented the University of Michigan in the 1918 Big Ten Conference football season. The team's head football coach was Fielding H. Yost in his 18th season with the program. The 1918 team played in a ...

. In a season shortened to five games due to the deadly

1918 flu epidemic The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...

and war-related travel restrictions, the Wolverines were 5–0 and

national champions National champions are corporations which are technically private businesses but due to governmental policy are ceded a dominant position in a national economy. In this system, these large organizations are expected not only to seek profit but als ...

. They shut out four of their opponents and outscored their opponents 96–6. In Michigan's first game against the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 13 years, Goetz scored a touchdown in the Wolverines' 13–0 victory. Goetz also had the key play in a 14–0 shutout over

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

. The game was scoreless when

attempted to punt out of its end zone, and Goetz broke through and blocked the punt which was recovered for a touchdown. He was selected as an All-Western Conference tackle in 1918. After an outstanding season in 1918, Goetz was elected as Michigan's captain for the 1919 season. He was elected captain for a second time for the 1920 season, becoming one of only three two-time Michigan football captain between 1893 and 1984, the others being Kirk Lewis (1975, 1976) and Robert Thompson (1981, 1982). In 1920, Goetz was described as "the mainstay of the Wolverine line and a player of exceptional ability." In November 1920, Edward Speyer, football writer for the ''Detroit News'' wrote: "There is one star on the team, and that is Goetz, a great player. ... It is a line from poor to good, with one great spot where Goetz stood ..." He was selected in 1920 as a first-team All-Western Conference player, and a second-team All-American by

Walter Camp Walter Chauncey Camp (April 7, 1859 – March 14, 1925) was an American football player, coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system ...

Goetz was also elected president of the University of Michigan Student Council in 1920 and attended the Midwest Student Conference as a Michigan delegate in April 1922. When he finished his college football career at Michigan, he had the distinction of having "played more minutes for Michigan than any other player in the university's history." In a 1920 profile of Goetz, the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

noted: "Perhaps his most notable distinction lies in the fact that no time has been taken out for him during any game in the four years that he has been in the Michigan machine." While continuing his medical school studies at Michigan, Goetz also worked as an assistant line coach under coach

Fielding H. Yost Fielding Harris Yost (; April 30, 1871 – August 20, 1946) was an American football player, coach and college athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at: Ohio Wesleyan University, the University of Nebraska, the University ...

during the 1921 football season.

Professional career

In 1922, Goetz was offered $240 a game for 10 professional football games. Goetz asked his former coach Fielding H. Yost what to do, and Yost told him he would lose his "M" if he played professional football. According to Yost, Goetz tore up the contract, and Yost told a conference of football coaches in New York, "The loss of his 'M' wasn't worth $2,400 to Angus Goetz." However, despite Yost's opinions, Goetz did later have a short run in professional football, playing nine games for the

in 1922 and the

in 1923. Goetz played professional football on the weekends while attending medical school. He later recalled, "We used to huddle in a hotel lobby before games to go over some signals. The game then wasn't like it is today."

Medical career

Goetz completed his internship at the University Hospital in Ann Arbor in 1924. Goetz became a leading orthopedic surgeon in Detroit. He served in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and returned to

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

in 1945 where he established an orthopedic practice in downtown Detroit. He went on to become the chief of orthopedics at

Detroit Receiving Hospital Detroit Receiving Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, is the state's first Level I Trauma Center. Receiving's emergency department treats more than 105,000 patients annually, and nearly 60% of Michigan's emergency physicians are trained at Receiving. ...

, and continued to practice medicine until his retirement in 1972.

Awards and honors

He was inducted into the

Upper Peninsula The Upper Peninsula of Michigan – also known as Upper Michigan or colloquially the U.P. – is the northern and more elevated of the two major landmasses that make up the U.S. state of Michigan; it is separated from the Lower Peninsula by t ...

Sports Hall of Fame in

Marquette, Michigan Marquette ( ) is a city in Marquette County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 20,629 at the 2020 United States Census, which makes it the largest city in the Upper Peninsula. Marquette serves as the seat of government of Marquett ...

in 1974. He also received the "Distinguished Alumni Award" from Sault Area High School in 1973.

References

External links

Bentley Library profile of Goetz
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Goetz, Angus 1897 births 1977 deaths American football tackles Buffalo All-Americans players Columbus Tigers players Michigan Wolverines football coaches Michigan Wolverines football players American military personnel of World War II American orthopedic surgeons People from Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan Physicians from Michigan Players of American football from Michigan University of Michigan Medical School alumni 20th-century surgeons