George Jacobs (basketball)

George "Doc" Jacobs was an American coach and athletic director. He served as the third head men's basketball coach at Villanova University from 1929 to 1936. A three-sport star in football, basketball and baseball at Villanova in the mid 1920s, Jacobs later became the school's baseball coach from 1933 to 1943, with a Villanova won-loss record of 106–37. After World War II, in 1947, Jacobs moved to the Burlington, Vermont suburb of Colchester, where he became the Athletic Director at St. Michael's College, serving in that and other athletic capacities until his death in 1968. Jacobs served as the school's baseball coach from 1948 through 1956, but it was as the school's basketball coach in the 1950s and early 1960s that he established St. Michael's NCAA Division II program, winning 159 games over a 12-year span and going to the NCAA National Division II tournament in Evansville, Indiana for three straight seasons, 1958 to 1960. He also served as the school's football coach, his 1951 "Purple Knights" going 6–0 and being declared "New England Champions". St. Michael's honors the memory of "Doc" annually, with their basketball season-opening tournament called "The Doc Jacobs Classic" and their athletic fields are named "Doc" Jacobs Field. Jacobs is considered "the father of modern day St. Michael's College Athletics".