William Herbert "Will" Bloss, Sr. (April 4, 1869 – June 22, 1921) was the first

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 ...

coach at

Oregon Agricultural College Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering col ...

(later known as Oregon State University) in 1893 and again in 1897. He also was the

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 ...

of the 1893 team. Bloss was heralded by contemporaries as a "great coach" and one of the fiercest players on the field of the first two decades of football in the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Tho ...

Biography

Early life

Will Bloss was born April 4, 1869 in

Orleans, Indiana Orleans is a town in Orleans Township, Orange County, in the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 2,142 at the 2010 census. History Orleans was platted in 1815, and named in commemoration of the Battle of New Orleans. A post office has be ...

."Obituary for William H. Bloss (Aged 52),"
''Mansfield News,'' vol. 37, no. 107 (June 22, 1921), p. 5. Bloss was the son of John McKnight Bloss, a

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

veteran and president of State Agricultural College (now Oregon State University) from 1892 to 1896. Bloss attended

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universi ...

where he was a star player on the football team. Bloss moved to Corvallis, Oregon shortly after his father did in June 1892.

Coaching career

The school later known as Oregon State University's first season of football was in 1893, and Bloss was instrumental in organizing the team."Football Players, Past and Present," ''Oregon Daily Journal'' ortland vol. 5, no. 33 (Nov. 1, 1908), p. 18. At that time, Oregon State was known as Oregon Agricultural College, OAC. William H. Bloss became the school's first coach, as well as the quarterback of the 1893 team. He was regarded years later as "a great coach and one of the fiercest players that ever figured in the game in the Northwest." Bloss scheduled tryouts in the fall of 1893 in an attempt to assemble a football team. By mid-October, he had found 17 players that would make up the first football team in Oregon State's history. The team was a hodgepodge of young men in Corvallis. Four players were not even students, including Coach Bloss. One was a high school junior and another was a faculty member. The first game was played on November 11, 1893 at 2:00pm at College Field on Lower Campus against

Albany College Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. Originally chartered in 1867 as the Albany Collegiate Institute in Albany, Oregon, the college was relocated to Portland in 1938 and in 1942 adopted the name Lewis & ...

. Over 500 spectators who paid a dime admission cheered on SAC (State Agriculture College of Oregon) to 62–0 win, a blowout by today's standards but even worse considering touchdowns were only worth four points at the time. Brady F. Burnett scored Oregon State's first touchdown in school history on a fumble return for a touchdown. In that first season, SAC went on to a 5–1 record. Bloss left Corvallis after that first season, but returned to coach the 1897 season. He did not quarterback the team. He led SAC to a 5–0 season, including victories over

Oregon Oregon () is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of its eastern boundary with Idaho. T ...

and

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. With those two wins, the team claimed their first "championship", as they proclaimed themselves the "champions of the northwest".

Life after football

In 1908 Will Bloss was said to be working as a civil engineer in "one of the southern states." During his last 14 years, Bloss worked as a district sales manager for the Ohio Brass Company. He was a

Scottish Rite The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction in the United States often omits the ''and'', while the English Constitution in the United Kingdom omits the ''Scottish''), commonly known as simply the S ...

Freemason and a member of the

Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE; also often known as the Elks Lodge or simply The Elks) is an American fraternal order founded in 1868, originally as a social club in New York City. History The Elks began in 1868 as a soci ...

. Bloss died suddenly at his home at 2:30 am the morning of June 22, 1921. He was survived by his wife, a daughter, and two sons. Bloss was buried at a family plot in Muncie, Indiana.

Head coaching record

Footnotes