Ernest C. Quigley

Ernest C. Quigley
Sport(s)	Football, basketball, baseball
Biographical details
Born	March 22, 1880(1880-03-22)
Place of birth	Newcastle, New Brunswick
Died	December 10, 1960(1960-12-10) (aged 80)
Place of death	St. Marys, Kansas
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
Football 1919	Kansas Wesleyan
Administrative career (AD unless noted)
1944–1950	Kansas
Head coaching record
Overall	0–1 (college football)
Statistics
College Football Data Warehouse
Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 1961 (profile)

Ernest Cosmos "Ernie" Quigley (March 22, 1880 – December 10, 1960) was a Canadian-born American sports official who became notable both as a basketball referee and as an umpire in Major League Baseball. He also worked as an American football coach and official.

Early life

Quigley was born in Newcastle, New Brunswick, and was raised in Concordia, Kansas where he was a prominent member of the high school football team in the 1890s.

Coaching and administrative career

Quigley was a student of basketball inventor James Naismith at the University of Kansas.

St. Mary's

After graduating he served as a coach, teacher and athletic director at St. Mary's College, Kansas from 1903 until 1912, while also attending law school at the University of Kansas.

Kansas Wesleyan

Quigley was the seventh head football coach for the Kansas Wesleyan University Coyotes located in Salina, Kansas and he held that position for the 1919 season, leading the team for only one game. The team lost its one game on November 22, 1919 against Fort Hays State University by a score of 26 to 0.

Kansas

In 1944, Quigley became the athletic director at the University of Kansas where he hired coaches George Sauer, Jules V. Sikes, and Dick Harp.

Officiating career

Quigley officiated at more than 1,500 collegiate and Amateur Athletic Union games during his 40-year career, and supervised the NCAA tournament officials from 1940 to 1942. He also refereed the basketball finals between the United States and Canada at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, played outdoors in the rain, in the first Games at which basketball was a medal sport. Rather than using his whistle, the small-statured Quigley often used his high-pitched voice to command attention in supervising play. In 1944 he became athletic director at Kansas, serving until 1950. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1961.

Professional baseball

Quigley was also a National League baseball umpire from 1913 to 1937, and oversaw six World Series, most notably the notorious 1919 Black Sox series, as well as those in 1916, 1921, 1924, 1927 and 1935; he was crew chief for the 1927 Series. On June 1, 1923, he was the home plate umpire for the game in which the New York Giants, visiting the Philadelphia Phillies, became the first 20th-century team to score in every inning of a 9-inning game, winning 22–8. He also participated in a 1928 baseball tour of Japan, and later became an NL supervisor of umpires. His 3,351 games as an umpire ranked seventh in major league history when he retired; his 1,511 games behind home plate are still the tenth most in history. Quigley Field, the University of Kansas' first baseball stadium, was named after him.

College football

Quigley also served as an official in major college football contests including the Army–Navy Game, five Harvard–Yale games, the Michigan–Illinois game, three Rose Bowls (1920, 1925, 1927), and the Cotton Bowl Classic. He was a member of the NCAA's Rules Committee from 1946 to 1954.

Death

Quigley died at age 80 in Lawrence, Kansas and was buried at that city's Mt. Calvary Cemetery.

External links

• BaseballLibrary.com
• Retrosheet
• Ernest C. Quigley at the College Football Data Warehouse