No. 76 • Pop McKale begins legendary career as UA baseball coach

May 8, 1914: Arizona hires James "Pop" McKale as coach, athletic director  

Arizona employed nine football coaches from 1899-1914. The transient nature was worse in baseball: 10 men coached UA’s baseball teams from 1904-14.

The teams had neither a nickname (they were referred to as the “Varsity”) nor an identity. To this day, more than a century later, the school’s archives insist that there was no UA basketball coach from 1906-11.

That all changed in the spring of 1914 when a headline in the Daily Star said:

McKale Is

Wanted By

Downtown

Folk

James Fred “Pop” McKale had been so successful in his two years as Tucson High’s football, baseball and basketball coach, routinely beating the UA, that even the school’s most noted coach, Raymond Quigley, agreed that McKale should be hired.

“McKale made sure Quigley did not want the job,” the Star wrote on April 30, 1914. Quigley stepped aside when he was hired as the director of Tucson’s city playgrounds.

The financial details weren’t lavish. McKale agreed to a salary of $1,700 as head coach of the football, basketball and baseball teams. He was given a budget of $835 to be the school’s first-ever athletic director.

He spent $575 on football, $200 on basketball, $40 on tennis and $10 each on baseball and track.

It was such a popular hire in a town whose population was probably close to 5,000, that on the day McKale was hired, the Star’s headline said:

Practically All Students

at University Want

McKale as Coach

“A petition requesting the appointment of J.F. McKale as athletic director was signed by about 100 students and the sporting writers of both newspapers.”

McKale was appointed to his position by the Board of Regents that afternoon, and over the next 40 years, the trajectory of the UA athletic department ultimately led to a growth far greater than regional rivals ASU, New Mexico, Texas Tech and UTEP.

It was slow growth.

McKale hired his first UA assistant coach, of any sport, in October 1914. That’s when agriculture professor Raymond Barnes became a line coach.

But mostly, McKale was a one-man gang for his first decade at Arizona, not atypical for a small-school athletic department in the early 20th century.

Before McKale began work as football-basketball coach in the winter of 1914-15, the school asked that he further his education. McKale spent the summer of ’14 at the University of Illinois, spending eight weeks studying “Theoretical and Practical” courses in football, baseball, track and athletics.

Having completed his so-called graduate degree, McKale returned to his hometown of Lansing, Michigan, and took a train back to Tucson to begin his first year as an AD on Sept. 19, 1914.

His first football game, in 1914, was played on the UA’s dirt field against the Douglas YMCA.

He stayed on the job until 1956, retiring when he was 70. He made the most of few resources.

“We never had an extra dime,” longtime UA track coach Carl Cooper told me in a 1996 interview.

“But Mac always had a vision to be something special, something beyond the athletic departments in Albuquerque and El Paso and Tempe. He was talking about getting into the Pac-8 with USC and UCLA in the ’50s.”

Here’s the official Pop McKale boxscore:

Athletic director, 43 years.

Baseball coach, 34 years.

Football coach, 17 years.

Track coach, seven years.

Basketball coach, six years.

During most of that tenure, McKale and his wife, Ada, lived at 801 E. Second St., which is now a parking garage near the Marriott hotel. He walked to work, counted pennies and signed most of his correspondence “Fear God and vote Republican.”

Predictably, McKale was old school in his appearance and manner.

Five-time Tucson High state championship football coach Rollin Gridley, who played football for McKale in the 1920s, told the Star that McKale “was like a God.”

Where are they now: McKale’s first office at the UA was at Herring Hall. It was 5 feet by 5 feet. It is now used as storage by the College of Agriculture. McKale died in 1967.

How he did it: McKale captained the construction of Bear Down Gym in 1927 and Arizona Stadium in 1929.

Photo: Undated Arizona Daily Star file photo of Pop McKale.