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.
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.