ABOUT US

  HALL OF FAMERS

  DICK KADIS AWARD

  SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENTS

  OTHER HONORS

  BANQUET INFO

  SPONSORS

  PAST BANQUETS

  EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

  RANDOM INDUCTEE

  WEBSITE CREDITS

  SUBMIT A NOMINATION

Jerry Ford

Athletic Director ∙ Monaca

Inducting Jerry Ford into the Beaver County Sports Hall of Fame was not a scheme to boost ticket sales: this Jerry Ford wasn’t a former president of the United States, but he did hold his job a lot longer than the one who was. Beaver County’s Jerry Ford earned many honors at Monaca High School, starring in football and baseball at the University of Pennsylvania. He was named athletic director at Penn in 1953 and held that post for 14 years, gaining a nationwide reputation for preserving and promoting the Ivy League tradition of genuinely amateur athletics (he helped establish the agreement that abolished spring football practice in the league). Jerry also served as vice president of the NCAA Executive Council and the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Executive Council, and was the founder of the Philadelphia Big Five Basketball League, a program under which the city’s five major basketball schools (Penn, LaSalle, Temple, St Joseph’s, and Villanova) played their games in a doubleheader format at the famous Penn Palestra.