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Tom Benjey

WSC football team posing on the field in Pasadena. Courtesy WSU Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections
Winter 2015

First ’16 Rose Bowl

WSC banged, smashed, bulled, and pounded their way to a 14–0 victory that started a storied football tradition.

Washington State supporters wondered, sometimes aloud, if President E. A. Bryan had made a grievous mistake in entrusting the football program to William “Lone Star” Dietz shortly after the sharp-dressed man arrived on September 1, 1915. 

Dietz emphasized conditioning over running plays, then a radical approach. He inherited eight experienced players and three teams of untested candidates, none of whom were familiar with the single- or double-wing formations Dietz—as Pop Warner’s protégé—brought with him from Carlisle Indian School. Hopes sank when the varsity squeaked by the alumni … » More …

Winter 2002

Lone Star Dietz left a football legacy

“That was the game which was to change the face of New Year’s Day in the years to come.”—Rose Bowl historian Rube Samuelsen

In the first four decades of the 20th century, hardly a week went by during football season when the name of William H. “Lone Star” Dietz’s didn’t appear in the nation’s sports pages. Today it’s rarely heard in Pullman, or anywhere else. In spite of that near silence for 60 years now, the one-time Washington State College football coach (1915-1917, 17-2-1 record) left a legacy that could land him in the College Football Hall of Fame next year.

He began his coaching … » More …