| Date of birth | January 15, 1867 |
|---|---|
| Place of birth | Massillon, Ohio |
| Date of death | Unknown |
| Position(s) | Manager |
| Championships won | 1903 Ohio League Champs 1904 Ohio League Champs 1905 Ohio League Champs 1906 Ohio League Champs |
| Team(s) as a coach/administrator | |
| 1903-1904 1905-1906 |
Massillon Tigers (officer) Massillon Tigers (manager) |
Jacob J. Wise was a Republican mayor of Massillon, Ohio from 1898 until 1902. He was also the Clerk of Courts for Massillion from 1903 until 1910. In 1912 he was elected to Ohio Senate for the 80th General Assembly. He was then re-elected in 1914 for the 81 General Assembly. During his time in the Senate, Wise was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Drainage and Irrigation, and a member of the following committees: Benevolent Institutions, County Affairs, Finance, Geological Survey, Labor, Manufactures and Commerce, Military Affairs, Public Works, State Buildings, and Temperance. He also served as Secretary of the Labor and Finance Committees.
Wise was also a founder, and later manager, of the professional American football team, the Massillon Tigers of the Ohio League. In 1903 Wise, who was the Massillon Clerk of Courts, organized a group of 35 local business leaders who met in the Hotel Sailer in downtown Massillon, to form a professional football team. He then led a committee to secure the necessary funds for a new football and jerseys that were nearly the same color. Massillon's local venders only had a sufficient quantity of one jersey style to outfit an entire team. Those jerseys imitated the orange and black striped attire of the Princeton Tigers. So the new Massillon team was christened the "Tigers."
By 1905 Wise was the manager of the Tigers, who won the 1903, 1904 and 1905 Ohio League titles. He remained the manager until after Tigers won the 1906 Ohio League championship. Immediately afterwards rumors of a betting fix tainted the championship. Major professional football would cease in Ohio until 1911.
In 1887 Jacob married Elizabeth Axel, of Ashland, Ohio. The couple would go onto have a daughter, Margery Whitman, and a grand-daughter, Mary Elizabeth.