Joseph "Little Joe" Wentworth (January 29, 1877 – April 7, 1944) 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, coach, and lawyer. Wentworth was born January 29, 1877, in

Sandwich, New Hampshire Sandwich is a town in Carroll County, New Hampshire, United States. Its population was 1,466 at the 2020 census. Sandwich includes the villages of Center Sandwich and North Sandwich. Part of the White Mountain National Forest is in the north, a ...

, to Paul and Ellen Tilton (Dunklee) Wentworth. Wentworth attended the

Holderness School , established = 1879 , type = Private high school , locale = , religion = Episcopal , image = , grades =9-12, PG , head_name = Headmaster , head = R. Phillip Peck , city = Holderness , state = New Hampshire , country = USA , student ...

from 1890 to 1896 and

Phillips Academy Andover ("Not for Self") la, Finis Origine Pendet ("The End Depends Upon the Beginning") Youth From Every Quarter Knowledge and Goodness , address = 180 Main Street , city = Andover , state = Ma ...

from 1893 to 1896. For his undergraduate career, he attended

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, graduating in 1900. He was a member of the

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, a Dartmouth secret society, and Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. Wentworth graduated from Harvard Law School in 1903, and spent most of his professional career with the law firm

Choate, Hall & Stewart Choate Hall & Stewart LLP, commonly referred to as "Choate", is a Boston-based law firm. The firm is known for having a one-office approach to its operations. Recognition In 2019, The Vault named Choate one of the top ten law firms to work fo ...

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Playing career

As a collegiate athlete, he played football at Dartmouth as a

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 ...

. He captained the freshmen team in 1896 and played varsity from 1897–1899. Wentworth captained the varsity team his final season in

1899 Events January 1899 * January 1 ** Spanish rule ends in Cuba, concluding 400 years of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. ** Queens and Staten Island become administratively part of New York City. * January 2 – **Bolivia sets up a c ...

. He was a member of the varsity baseball team during his junior and senior years playing centerfield.

Coaching career

Wentworth began his career coaching for

Kenyon Kenyon may refer to: Names * Kenyon (given name) * Kenyon (surname) Places * Kenyon, Cheshire, United Kingdom, a village * Kenyon, Minnesota, United States, a city * Kenyon, Rhode Island, United States, a village * Kenyon, former name of Pineridg ...

from 1900 to 1901. When hired in 1902 by

Case School of Applied Science The Case School of Engineering is the engineering school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. It traces its roots to the 1880 founding of the Case School of Applied Science. It became the Case Institute of Technology in 1947 ...

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, Coach Wentworth was the highest paid football coach in the nation at $3,000. Upon its formation in 1902, Wentworth won the first four titles of the

Ohio Athletic Conference The Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) was formed in 1902 and is the third oldest athletic conference in the United States. Its current commissioner is Sarah Otey. Former commissioners include Mike Cleary, who was the first General Manager of a profe ...

with Case School of Applied Science. During this four year stretch, he achieved a dominating league record of 18–1–1, including beating archrival Western Reserve by a combined 132–0. In 1906, college football's rules changed allowing for the

forward pass In several forms of football, a forward pass is the throwing of the ball in the direction in which the offensive team is trying to move, towards the defensive team's goal line. The forward pass is one of the main distinguishers between gridir ...

. After coaching one season under the new rules, Coach Wentworth decided to resign, saying he would go back to Boston and practice law rather than learn football all over again.

Professional career and later years

After graduating Harvard Law School, Wentworth became a member of the

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bar in 1903 and was associated with the firm Choate, Hall & Stewart of Boston, before officially becoming a member of the firm in 1909.

Head coaching record

References

1877 births 1944 deaths 19th-century players of American football Baseball players from New Hampshire Case Western Spartans football coaches Dartmouth Big Green baseball players Dartmouth Big Green football players Harvard Law School alumni Kenyon Lords football coaches People from Sandwich, New Hampshire Phillips Academy alumni Players of American football from New Hampshire Sportspeople from Carroll County, New Hampshire {{1900s-collegefootball-coach-stub