Top Three Coaches of Buffalo’s Second Era

With kickoff just 65 days away and Buffalo Coach Maurice Linguist about to complete his first calendar year at Buffalo, I thought it would be neat to take a look back at some other UB coaches.

We’ve looked at the “First Era” of UB football which covered from 1894 to 1903. This time we’re going to look at the “Second Era” which ran from 1915-1942. It began when Frank Pleasant helped reboot the program and Buffalo played their 50th game against and concluded when America got pulled into World War II.

Jim Peele deserves to be at the top of a lot of Buffalo Lists. An Illinois native, Peele played college football as a quarterback at Purdue University from 1931-1933. Right after college he came to buffalo to work on the staff of George Van Bibber. When Van Bibber resigned as coach Peele took over the team, and the department as UB’s athletic director (A position he held until 1969).

He coached football until 1947, compiling a record of 38-34-1, he also foudned and coached the UB Baseball team for 15 years.

Jay “Biffy” Lee only coached for two years but they were two of the team's better years during this era. The team went 5-2 in 1929 which would be the best record the team would have until 1942, under Peele.

Lee was a player at Albion College, and then in 1911 transferred to Notre Dame where he played quarterback. After college, he coached, first at Penn University (in Iowa) and then in 1916 as an assistant football coach at Notre Dame.

After a few more years at Albion he stepped away from coaching for a decade until he got a job at UB teaching Marketing. He also too over the football team. In 1931, he unexpectedly resigned as the head coach of the Buffalo football program to attend to business duties.

Frank Pleasant coached just a single season but managed a 3-3 record on a team that had been non-existant for a dozen years. He took up the name “Bison” which the program would hold until professional teams in Buffalo started to adopt the name which caused brand confusion. The team was renamed the “Bulls” in the early 30s.