Graydon Poe Eggers Sr. (October 13, 1903 – January 11, 1994) was an American
college football
College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States.
Unlike most ...
and
college basketball
In United States colleges, top-tier basketball is governed by collegiate athletic bodies including National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), the United States Collegiate Athleti ...
coach and professor of English. He was the first head football coach at Appalachian State Normal School–now known as
Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University (; Appalachian, App State, App, or ASU) is a public university in Boone, North Carolina. It was founded as a teachers college in 1899 by brothers B. B. and D. D. Dougherty and the latter's wife, Lillie Shull Dough ...
–located in
Boone, North Carolina
Boone is a town in and the county seat of Watauga County, North Carolina, United States. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina, Boone is the home of Appalachian State University and the headquarters for the disaster a ...
. He coached the team for one season, in 1928, compiling a record of 3–6. Eggers was also the head basketball coach at Appalachian State, for one season in 1944–45, tallying a mark of 6–13.
Eggers, a native of
Watauga County, North Carolina
Watauga County ( ) from the North Carolina Collection's website at the , was a longtime English professor at Appalachian State University, serving there from 1927 to 1970. He obtained his
Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...
in English from
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
in 1935. His specialty was translating
Middle English
Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...
. In 1955 Eggers published a translation of ''
The Owl and the Nightingale
''The Owl and the Nightingale'' ( la, Altercatio inter filomenam et bubonem) is a twelfth- or thirteenth-century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator. It is the earliest exam ...
'', a Middle English poem. In 1971 Appalachian State University dedicated Eggers Residential Hall to Eggers and his brother, Herman Eggers.