Elmer "Gloomy Gus" Henderson (2005) - USC Athletics Hall of Fame

Elmer "Gloomy Gus" Henderson

Induction:
2005

Elmer “Gloomy Gus” Henderson, who first put USC on the national gridiron map, still has the best winning percentage (.865) of any Trojan football coach. He went 45-7 in his 6 years (1919-24) at Troy. He led USC to its first Rose Bowl berth (a 14-3 win over Penn State in the 1922 game) and also into the post-season Christmas Festival (a 20-7 victory over Missouri in 1924). He was in charge when USC posted its first 10-win season and played its first game in the Coliseum. He is credited with inventing the spread offense formation. He also coached the Trojans’ basketball and baseball teams in 1920 and 1921. After USC, he was the head coach at Tulsa (1925-35), then with the Los Angeles Bulldogs (1936-38) and Detroit Lions (1939), and at Occidental (1940-41). He then helped run a boys camp on Catalina Island. A graduate of Oberlin College who then was a successful high school coach in Washington before arriving at USC, he earned his nickname (the name of a comic strip character of the era) because he was forever predicting disaster for his team. He died at age 76 on Dec. 16, 1965.