Charles W. Zeitler (August 1871 – 1903) 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 wi ...

player from

South Bend, Indiana South Bend is a city in and the county seat of St. Joseph County, Indiana, on the St. Joseph River near its southernmost bend, from which it derives its name. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total of 103,453 residents and is the fourt ...

. Zeitler was the first

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

for the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic university, Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend, Indiana, South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin fo ...

to win four games. Zeitler was born to a family of

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n immigrants in Clay Township, just north of

. His father, John V. Zeitler, was a very wealthy landowner and farmer who had held local office as a trustee and assessor. Joining the Notre Dame football team in 1893 at a time when the program had just begun to schedule major opponents in earnest, Zeitler made the most of the opportunity, beginning the season 4-0 with victories over

Kalamazoo Kalamazoo ( ) is a city in the southwest region of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county seat of Kalamazoo County. At the 2010 census, Kalamazoo had a population of 74,262. Kalamazoo is the major city of the Kalamazoo-Portage Metropoli ...

, Albion, DeLasalle and Hillsdale, before finally falling 0-8 to

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

in a road game on New Year's Day. The following season, Zeitler moved to the right end position, yielding the quarterback job to Nicholas Dinkel. Zeitler returned to his homestead after graduation. In 1903 he died of

typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...

. He is buried in the

South Bend City Cemetery The South Bend City Cemetery is a historic cemetery in South Bend, Indiana. History The South Bend City Cemetery was established in 1831, when Lathrop Taylor and Alexis Coquillard donated the land upon which it was built. Jacob Roof was the firs ...

References

* Steele, Michael R. ''The Fighting Irish Football Encyclopedia.'' Champaign, IL: Sports Publishing LLC (1996). * ''Pictorial and Biographical Memoirs of Elkhart and St. Joseph Counties, Indiana.'' Chicago: Goodspeed Bros. Publishers (1893) 1871 births American football quarterbacks Notre Dame Fighting Irish football players 1903 deaths Deaths from typhoid fever {{quarterback-stub