During halftime of Cornell's home football game Saturday, Sept. 20, with Princeton University at Schoellkopf Field, there will be a ceremony honoring a Cornell and American football coaching legend Glenn Scobey "Pop" Warner.
This past July 43 years after his death the U.S. Postal Service issued a Pop Warner commemorative stamp, along with stamps honoring fellow coaching legends Paul "Bear" Bryant, Vince Lombardi and George Halas.
On the field at halftime of the Princeton-Cornell game, Ithaca Postmaster Edward Gatch will present to Cornell an enlarged, framed print of the Pop Warner stamp. Receiving the print on behalf of the university will be Alan V. Manchester, a 1960 Cornell alumnus from Warner's hometown of Springville, N.Y., who was instrumental in gaining this recognition for Warner. A story describing Warner's remarkable career will appear in the game program.
Warner, born in 1871, became known as "Pop" to his younger classmates during his law school and football playing days at Cornell from 1892 to 1894.
After graduation from Cornell and a brief legal career in western New York, he took a job as football coach at Iowa State beginning a career of 44 years in coaching. In addition to Iowa State, he piloted teams at the University of Georgia, Cornell, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the University of Pittsburgh, Stanford University and Temple University. On three occasions, he coached teams from two schools simultaneously Iowa State and Georgia during the 1895 and 1896 seasons, Iowa State and Cornell in 1897 and 1898, and Iowa State and Carlisle in 1899.
Among those he coached were two of the greatest football players of all time Jim Thorpe, at Carlisle, and Ernie Nevers, at Stanford.
He finished his career with 319 major college wins second all-time. And his name was further immortalized by the thousands of little-league football teams that have played under the Pop Warner sanction.