page_title: Nevada Wolf Pack football
section_title: Early history (1896–1958)
hierarchical_section_title: Nevada Wolf Pack football / History / Early history (1896–1958)
caption_attribution_description: English: Allen C Steckle, UMich
context_page_description: The Nevada Wolf Pack football program represents the University of Nevada, Reno in college football. The Wolf Pack competes in the Mountain West Conference at the Football Bowl Subdivision level of the NCAA Division I. It was founded on October 24, 1896 as the Sagebrushers in Reno, Nevada.
  The Wolf Pack's home field is Mackay Stadium, located at the north end of its campus in Reno, having been moved from it original location which opened on October 23, 1909. The "new" Mackay Stadium saw its first game 54 years ago on October 1, 1966 with a seating capacity of 7,500 and has undergone several renovations. The stadium currently seats 30,000 and has played to crowds in excess, but decreased its capacity to 26,000 by the 2016 season to increase the quality of the experience in the stadium and later increased its capacity to 27,000 by the 2017 season and 30,000 by the 2018 season. The elevation of its playing field is 4,610 feet above sea level.
  Nevada has had three individuals inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. They are coach Chris Ault, running back Frank Hawkins and former coach Buck Shaw.
context_section_description: Nevada's football history began on October 24, 1896. However, there was no football program from 1906–14 (only rugby), in 1918 (due to World War I) and in 1951.
  In 1896, the university, at that time the only institution of higher learning in the state of Nevada and called by the moniker Nevada State University, investigated the possibility of adding football to their short list of athletic programs and hired Taylor from the University of California, Berkeley for the purpose of developing and fielding the U's first gridiron squadron. They played only two games that year, the first of which was scheduled against the Belmont preparatory school to take place on "the hill" at the original Mackay Stadium, located in the depression at the middle of campus where the Mack Social Sciences, Reynolds School of Journalism, and the auspicious Lecture Hall currently exist. The result was a complete debacle as Belmont relentlessly thrashed the hapless Sagebrushers (lat. Wolf Pack) by the tally of 70–0.  
  "But," the University of Nevada yearbook Artemesia would report five years later, "the team learned something about football by watching the Belmont boys play." Two weeks later and the 'Brushers met up with the Berkeley "Second Eleven" with much more favorable results (with NSU only giving up forty points. "Thus the initial chapter of the athletic history of the University was one of defeat," sayeth the 1901 Artemesia.
  
  From 1901 to 1903, Allen Steckle served as the head football coach at the University of Nevada. In 1903, he was also appointed to the position as the university's Physical Director. In his three seasons as the head coach, he compiled a 6–9–2 record. When Steckle's Nevada Sagebrush team defeated the University of California in 1903, it was the cause of a statewide celebration. The entire front page of the Daily Nevada State Journal was given to coverage of the game, and the banner headline read: "CALIFORNIA'S PROUD COLORS LOWERED BY THE DOUGHTY ELEVEN FROM SAGEBRUSHDOM."  Steckle's picture appeared on the front page, and the paper praised his efforts in turning Nevada into a football power:
  "Out of the eighty students of the N.S.U. have been selected eleven young men who were moulded into shape by Dr. Steckle, the best football coach who ever came to the Coast. He made of them the peers of the flower of the California universities."
   The victory of a university with only 80 students over the University of California with its 3,000 students was hailed as a historic accomplishment, and "Coach Steckle's brand of 'roughhouse'" play was given much of the credit.
  Steckle's star players at Nevada from 1901 to 1903 were his younger brother Ivan X. Steckle, who played halfback, and Abe Steckle, who played tackle. Ivan Steckle was reportedly "the hero of all Nevada during the football season of 1903, when in a game with the University of California on the U.C. field, he grabbed the football close to the Nevada goal line and made a wonderful 86-yard run to the California goal line, scoring a touchdown for the Sagebrush players and bringing victory to the team." Ivan left Nevada after the 1903 season to follow his older brother to the University of Michigan Medical School. Ivan died from typhoid fever in 1909, and Steckle accompanied his brother's body to the family's old home in Freeport, Michigan.
  
  In 1919, a Nevada newspaper rated Steckle as the best football coach Nevada ever had and described his accomplishments as follows:
  "It was under the coaching of Dr. Steckle that Nevada was able to defeat the University of California and play a tie with Stanford as well as bang it over the crack athletic club teams that San Francisco boasted when the great college game was in its hey dey. He was rated at that time as one of the best coaches in the West."
  Steckle was also remembered at Nevada for his ability to instill "college spirit" in the school's student body. In 1919, a Nevada newspaper noted that "there was more enthusiasm displayed in college athletics while he was coach than there has been in all the years since he left." As a med
caption: Allen Steckle served as head coach from 1901 to 1903
exif: {}