Lester Lautenschlager

Sport: Football

Induction Year: 1983

University: Tulane

Induction Year: 1983

Long before the New Orleans Saints came along, Lester Lautenschlaeger brought professional football to New Orleans.

It happened in January of 1926, when C.C. Pyle brought his Chicago Bears—featuring Red Grange—to the Crescent City for an exhibition game during one of their barnstorming tours.

After quarterbacking Tulane’s 1925 team to an undefeated season, Lautenschlaeger—who was already doing postgraduate work and practicing law on the side—was hired as an assistant coach by Clark Shaughnessy.

Pyle contacted him and asked him to put a team together for the exhibition game, promising him $6,000 for expenses. But Tulane officials took a strong stand against the intrusion of professional football, saying anybody connected with the proposed game would have no place at their school.

Lautenschlaeger’s father, an attorney, warned his son about Pyles’ reputation for reneging on financial agreements. It was a standing joke in Chicago that the initials stood for Cash and Carry.” So Lautenschlaeger insisted on a “pay first, play later” arrangement.

He got $3,000 from Pyle the day before the game, and demanded the rest by halftime. When Pyle made himself scarce during the first half, Lautenschlaeger—who was playing the game—went to the press box at Heinemen Park during the intermission and told writers who inquired about his presence that there would be no second half if he didn’t get the rest of the money. Pyle rushed up from the stands to deposit the remaining $3,000 in a black bag provided by Lautenschlaeger’s father.

He split the money among the players—including former Tulane teammate Alfred “Brother” Brown, who quit the Green Wave staff when he heard of the school’s attitude toward the exhibition. (They were already upset with school officials for turning down a Rose Bowl bid the previous month.)

“I didn’t have a chance to quit,” Lautenschlaeger recalled later. “They fired me.”

Lautenschlaeger played quarterback for Tulane football teams for four seasons in the 1920s, and was also captain of the Green Wave baseball team.

An honorable mention Grantland Rice All-American, he had a 95-yard touchdown run against North Caroline in 1922. A few years after Tulane fired him for arranging the pro exhibition game, fences were mended and he returned to the Green Wave staff—helping develop such great players as Don Zimmerman and Claude “Little Monk” Simons.

As an assistant on Bernie Bierman’s Tulane staff, Lautenschlaeger was known for fiery halftime oratory. When the Green Wave was playing Georgia in 1929, he concluded a chewing-out by throwing his hat on the floor, stomping on it and shouting, “Georgia! I can lick the whole state of Georgia by myself!”

That inspired the reserved Bierman to step forward, drive his own heel into Lautenschlaeger’s crumpled hat, and exclaim, “So can I!” Tulane won the game, but the new hat never recovered.

Deception was the trademark of Shaughnessy’s 25-player Tulane squad. When Auburn’s Plainsmen concentrated on stopping Charles “Peggy” Flournoy in 1925, Lautenschlaeger trotted across the goal line with the football.

Throughout his 31-year college coaching career, Shaughnessy said Lautenschlaeger was as good as any quarterback he ever coached—and that included All-American Frankie Albert of Stanford and Sid Luckman of Chicago Bears.

They had a special relationship, with Shaughnessy calling Lautenschlaeger at all hours to discuss a change in a particular play. “He was a coaching genius, a man ahead of his time,” Lautenschlaeger said after Shaughnessy’s death. “They credited him with first using the T-formation at Stanford in 1940, but we used it a tTulane in the 1920s. It just wasn’t called the T then. We also had a Y-formation which closely resembled the Wishbone used by Texas and Alabama 40 years later.”

Shaughnessy used a three-end offense at Tulane in the 1920s, and later used it to revolutionize professional football.

Lautenschlaeger, who was inducted into the National Football Foundation hall of Fame in 1975, became the first Tulane player to score four touchdowns in a single game when the Green Wave opened its 1925 season with a 77-0 route of Louisiana College. He scored two of them on punt returns for another school record. Later in the season, teammate Flournoy equaled his four-touchdown performance against Louisiana Tech—and set a school scoring record of 31 points by adding four extra points and one field goal.

More than 50 years later lautenschlaeger’s playing career ended, Tulane fans selected an all-time Green Wave team. The quarterback position on the first team went to Steve Foley, who used Tulane as a springboard to a National Football League career in the 1970s. The second team selection was “the little Dutchman,” Lester Lautenschlaeger.