Wallace Wade William Wallace Wade ( June 15 , 1892 – October 7 , 1986 ) was an American football player and coach of football , basketball and baseball . He served as the head football coach at the University of Alabama from 1923 to 1930 and at Duke University from 1931 to 1941 and again from 1946 to 1950 , compiling a career college football record of 171 – 49 – 10 . His tenure at Duke was interrupted by military service during World War II . Wade ' s Alabama Crimson Tide football teams of 1925 , 1926 and 1930 have been recognized as national champions . Wade won a total of ten Southern Conference football titles , four with Alabama and six with the Duke Blue Devils . He coached in five Rose Bowls including the 1942 game , which was relocated from Pasadena , California to Durham , North Carolina after the attack on Pearl Harbor . Wade served as the head basketball and baseball coach at Vanderbilt University for two seasons ( 1921 – 1923 ) , tallying a mark of 24 – 16 , while he was an assistant football coach there . He was also the head baseball coach at Vanderbilt from 1922 to 1923 and at Alabama from 1924 to 1927 , amassing a career college baseball record of 87 – 45 – 2 . Wade played football at Brown University . After retiring from coaching , Wade served as the commissioner of the Southern Conference from 1951 to 1960 . He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1955 . Duke ' s football stadium was renamed in his honor as Wallace Wade Stadium in 1967 . Early life playing career . Wade was born in Trenton , Tennessee . He first played football under Tuck Faucett at Peabody High School in Trenton . He went on in 1913 to play football at Brown University . He was a guard . One of his teammates at Brown was Fritz Pollard , who went on to become the first African American coach in the National Football League . Coaching career . Wade ' s first coaching job was at the Fitzgerald and Clarke Military School in Tullahoma , Tennessee . He went 16 – 3 , winning a state prep - school championship in 1920 . Among his players were future consensus All - Americans Lynn Bomar and " Hek " Wakefield . In 1921 Wade was hired as an assistant coach at Vanderbilt University . Vanderbilt posted an undefeated 15 – 0 – 2 with Wade , and shared conference titles both years he was there . After working as an assistant for Vanderbilt , Wade was hired as the head coach at the University of Alabama in 1923 . Over the next seven years , Wade ' s team won three national championships after appearing in the Rose Bowl in 1925 , 1926 and 1930 . Prior to the ranking systems , the Rose Bowl determined the national champion . Following his third national championship , Wade shocked the college football world by moving to Duke University , which had less of a football tradition than Alabama . Though Wade refused to answer questions regarding his decision to leave Alabama for Duke until late in his life , he eventually told a sports historian he believed his philosophy regarding sports and athletics fit perfectly with the philosophy of the Duke administration and that he felt being at a private institution would allow him greater freedom . Wade continued to succeed at Duke , most notably in 1938 , when his " Iron Dukes " went unscored upon until reaching the 1939 Rose Bowl , where they lost , 7 – 3 , to the USC in Duke ' s first Rose Bowl appearance . Wade ' s Blue Devils lost the 1942 Rose Bowl to Oregon State . The game was held at Duke Stadium , the Blue Devils ' home stadium in Durham , North Carolina , because the recent attack on Pearl Harbor made the event ' s organizers skittish of hosting the game in California . Wade entered military service after the Rose Bowl loss and the legendary Eddie Cameron filled in for him as head football coach from 1942 to 1945 . Wade returned to coach the Blue Devils in 1946 and continued until his retirement in 1950 . In 16 seasons , Wade ' s Duke teams compiled a record of 110 wins , 36 losses and 7 ties . Later life and honors . From 1951 to 1960 Wade was the commissioner of the Southern Conference . He was inducted College Football Hall of Fame in 1955 . In 1967 , Duke ' s football stadium was renamed Wallace Wade Stadium in his honor . Wade died in 1986 in Durham at the age of 94 and was buried in Maplewood Cemetery in Durham . In 2006 , a bronze statue of Wade was erected outside of the University of Alabama ' s Bryant – Denny Stadium alongside the statues of Frank Thomas , Bear Bryant , Gene Stallings and now Nick Saban , the other head coaches who led Alabama to national championships .