William Thomas "Mother" Dunn (May 13, 1881 in Youngstown, Ohio

Youngstown, Ohio

Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Mahoning County; it also extends into Trumbull County. The municipality is situated on the Mahoning River, approximately southeast of Cleveland and northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania...

 – November 17, 1962 on Maui

Maui

The island of Maui is the second-largest of the Hawaiian Islands at and is the 17th largest island in the United States. Maui is part of the state of Hawaii and is the largest of Maui County's four islands, bigger than Lānai, Kahoolawe, and Molokai. In 2010, Maui had a population of 144,444,...

) was a collegiate

College football

College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...

 American football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 player, who played linebacker

Linebacker

A linebacker is a position in American football that was invented by football coach Fielding H. Yost of the University of Michigan. Linebackers are members of the defensive team, and line up approximately three to five yards behind the line of scrimmage, behind the defensive linemen...

 and center

Center (American football)

Center is a position in American football and Canadian football . The center is the innermost lineman of the offensive line on a football team's offense...

 for Penn State University. Dunn captained the 1906 Penn State Nittany Lions football

Penn State Nittany Lions football

The Penn State Nittany Lions football team represents the Pennsylvania State University in the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Football Bowl Subdivision as a member of the Big Ten Conference. It is one of the most tradition-rich and storied college football programs in the...

 team and that year became the first player outside of the Ivy League

Ivy League

The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...

 to be selected as an All-American by Walter Camp

Walter Camp

Walter Chauncey Camp was an American football player, coach, and sports writer known as the "Father of American Football". With John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, Fielding H. Yost, and George Halas, Camp was one of the most accomplished persons in the early history of American football...

. He was also the first great linebacker in the history of the school that would eventually be nicknamed "Linebacker U" for its traditional excellence at the position.

William Dunn is also featured on the Official 2011 Nittany Lion Football Schedule Poster as part of the celebration of 125 years of Penn State Football.

External links

• "The legacy of Linebacker U" The Daily Collegian
  The Daily Collegian (Pennsylvania)
  The Daily Collegian is an award-winning, student-operated newspaper that is published independently at the Pennsylvania State University. The newspaper is printed on weekdays during the Fall, Spring, and second Summer semesters. It is distributed for free at the University Park campus...
  
  , September 2, 2000