page_title: Elmer Oliphant
section_title: West Point
hierarchical_section_title: Elmer Oliphant / West Point
caption_attribution_description: Legendary football player Elmer Oliphant in Army letterman's jacket
context_page_description: Elmer Quillen "Catchy" or "Ollie" Oliphant was an American football, basketball and track player and coach. He is one of the great scorers in college football history, credited with a total of 435 points in his college career – 135 at Purdue and 300 at Army. Oliphant also went on to play in the National Football League.
context_section_description: At West Point, he was the first cadet athlete to letter in four major sports and it required a special act of the Athletic Council to design a suitable varsity letter containing a gold star and three stripes for him.  Back at the turn of the 20th century, the criteria to receive a letter was very strict.  He also monogrammed in hockey, boxing, and swimming which meant that he wasn’t able to participate fully in those sports but was recognized. At that, he is listed as a Champion Boxer in the Corps of Cadets.
  He still holds records that have never been broken.  He has the individual record for scoring in a single football game at Purdue which was for 43 points in 1912.   At West Point he is the season leader with 125 points in 1917 and holds an individual record for scoring with 45 points in 1916.   During his college career, he scored 135 points at Purdue and 289 points at West Point and is identified as one of the greatest scorers in collegiate history. He established  the World Record in 220-yard low hurdles on grass.
  While at West Point he won the Army Athletic Association Trophy.  (He won in 1918.  2004 was the 100th year the trophy was given.)  He also won the Edgerton Saber as football captain and the Army Athletic Association Saber as the outstanding athlete.  Forty-four years after he left Indiana, the Helms Foundation asked sports writers and experts to select Indiana’s Finest Amateur Athlete and Oliphant was selected.  In 1969, which was the 100th anniversary of the game, the Football Writers Association of America came up with two 11 man teams.  The FWAA Early-Day All-Time All-America Team (1869 to 1919) includes Oliphant. He was the only member of that team still living and attended the ceremony. One team represented the first 50 years and the second team represented the next.
  He has been inducted into several Halls of Fame.  The most recent induction occurred on October 6, 2004.  He was in the inaugural group of sixteen inducted into the Army Sports Hall of Fame at West Point.  A color copy of the plaque is on display in the commons at Linton-Stockton High School.  The base of the plaque is black with a shape that has forms taken from castle architecture such as crenellation.  This is perhaps to tie in the plaque to the team name which is “The Black Knights”. In 2006, of the 4.5 million who have played college football in the 138-year history of the game, only 813 players had been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
  On graduation day, June 12, 1918, he married Barbara "Bobbie" Benedict.  World War I changed priorities at West Point, and they reverted to purely military instruction during wartime.  Among his duties, he served in the U.S. Cavalry for one year at Fort Sill in Oklahoma.  While in military service at West Point in 1919, he invented the intramural sports system as we know it today.  The idea was copied by the Naval Academy and was soon used in colleges and universities across the country.  He was appointed track instructor at West Point by Douglas MacArthur, who was the superintendent after returning from World War I.  MacArthur later was Supreme Allied Commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations (term used for all military activity in that area) during World War II and accepted the surrender of Japan in September 1945.  Oliphant knew many generals, including General Lucius Clay, “Father of the Berlin Air Lift”, who roomed across the hall from him at West Point and General Dwight David Eisenhower who corresponded with him, calling him “Ollie”, which was his college nickname.
  Although he is virtually forgotten today, he was known to every sports fan in the first quarter of the 20th century.  There is a 1955 Topps All-American collectible sports card with his picture, and a Street and Smith comic book featured him in 1943 with a section “The Thrilling Story of West Point’s Most Famous Athlete    Four Letter Man, Ollie Oliphant.” A board game that featured a picture of him inside a football shape on the cover is dated from 1933.  It is titled "Oliphant Football Game" and was
caption: Oliphant in Army letterman's jacket.
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