Cliff Keen, The Man Behind The Wrestling Gear Company

By Leah Howard, U-M Athletic Media Relations

“I believe that wrestling plays a highly educational part in the development of a boy. The fundamental that every successful wrestler must acquire, and which has great carryover value after his student days, is self-discipline. From self-discipline stems self-confidence and belief in one’s self. What greater lesson can a sport or a coach impart?”

For 42 years, young men came to the University of Michigan to learn about life and wrestle at the collegiate level, and from 1925-70 there was one constant in the U-M wrestling program: head coach Cliff Keen. His 42-year career continues to stand as the record for longest tenure by a college wrestling coach, and it is among the longest careers by a coach in any sport in the history of the NCAA.

During his tenure at the helm of the Wolverine wrestling program, Keen’s squads posted a record of 272 wins, 91 losses and 10 ties. His Michigan teams won 12 Big Ten Conference championships and finished among the conference’s top three in all but five seasons during his run. Keen coached 11 NCAA individual champions, 68 All-Americans and 81 Big Ten champions, and he led his Wolverines to 24 top-10 NCAA finishes, including back-to-back runner-up showings in 1928 and 1929.

Keen was also a member of the Michigan football coaching staff for 33 years, serving as an assistant coach to legendary U-M bosses Fielding Yost, Fritz Crisler and Bennie Oosterbaan. Keen guided the Wolverines’ 150-pound football team to two national titles during the only two seasons Michigan fielded the team (1947, ’48), and he is credited with introducing the T-formation to the Wolverine program. Keen’s assistant coach with the 150-pound team was George Allen, former head coach of the NFL Washington Redskins, and among his former players were Jerry Burns, former head coach of the NFL Minnesota Vikings, and Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States.

Born June 13, 1901, on a ranch outside of Cheyenne, Okla., Keen was a standout athlete at Weatherford High school. His interest in wrestling grew from an encounter with members of the Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) wrestling team during his freshman year of college. Keen was shooting baskets at the campus gym when an Aggie wrestler, who was without a sparring partner, asked for his assistance in practicing a few wrestling holds. Outweighing the wrestler by approximately 30 pounds and believing it was an easy challenge, Keen gladly accepted. The wrestler threw him all over the mat, and Keen immediately became curious as to how it was done and joined the Aggie wrestling squad himself.

Wrestling under legendary coach Edward C. Gallagher, Keen was an undefeated 158-pound wrestler through his collegiate career, winning two Southwestern Conference titles, a Missouri Valley Conference title and a National Invitational Tournament championship. Keen’s accomplishments went beyond wrestling. An outstanding all-around athlete, he was a three-sport letterman at Oklahoma A&M, serving two seasons as the football team’s center (1922, ’23) while competing in the hurdles and shot put in the during spring track season.

In 1924 — the same year as his college graduation — Keen was selected to the U.S. Olympic wrestling team after winning the Olympic Trials but was sidelined by a broken rib suffered in training camp. His replacement, a fellow Oklahoma A&M star named George Lookabaugh, went on to place fourth at the Paris Games. Keen remained involved with the Olympic wrestling program, serving on the U.S. Olympic Committee from 1928-52 and traveling to the 1948 London Games as a manager of the U.S. team.

Prior to his arrival at Michigan, Keen spent two years as athletic director and coach at Oklahoma’s Frederick High School, where he guided the football, wrestling and boxing programs. Once in Ann Arbor, Keen developed the U-M wrestling program from scratch with only one veteran, Russell Baker, returning from the previous season’s squad. Only 15 candidates responded to his first call for tryouts. After guiding the Wolverines to a runner-up Big Ten finish in his first year as head coach — Michigan had an 0-7 record the previous season — Keen received 100 candidates at tryouts the following year.

Keen remained a tough opponent in the practice room and continually challenged his wrestlers, always with an even tone, to push themselves, work through positions and take risks. Former Wolverine Frank Bissell, who competed in football and wrestling under Keen, commented to the Michigan Daily midway through his senior year, “A dozen times I’ve thought I had him. I’ve clamped the best holds in the business on him. But he gets away and always with something new, and I find myself on my back. It’s been disconcerting. But I’ll pin him some day. Maybe I’ll have to be 70 and he’s 100. But I won’t be happy until I toss him on his ear.”

A tireless and vocal promoter of wrestling on both the local and national scale, Keen drew comparisons to P.T. Barnum when he spoke to a local newspaper on the eve of the 1937 Big Ten Tournament, scheduled to take place at Michigan’s Intramural Building, “We have the greatest show on earth! It’ll be the most stupendous sports affair that ever hit this fair countryside! It’s the world’s greatest contact contest ‘mongst the toughest he-men in the Big Ten! The time is Friday and Saturday and the place in right here! Come and bring friends and family! More for your money than any show in existence!”

Keen was also instrumental in the development of the sport across the United States, and today his name remains synonymous with collegiate wrestling. The inaugural president of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, he long presided over the national rules committee and, for many years, pioneered the development of safe and effective wrestling equipment. In 1958, he founded Cliff Keen Athletic to sell and promote his invention of wrestling headgear, and he turned the company into the largest wrestling provider in the United States. The company is still operated by second- and third-generation members of the Keen family. Keen’s son, Jim Sr., received the 2004 National Wrestling Hall of Fame Order of Merit Award for his own extraordinary contributions to the sport of wrestling.

Keen received his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1933 and, later that year, was admitted to the Michigan State Bar. He often spent his mornings trying cases and his afternoons coaching. For years, Keen’s plan had been to transition away from coaching into fulltime law practice, but, needing job while the country was in the depths of the depression, Keen remained at Michigan until he was drafted into the U.S. Navy.

He spent three years as a Naval Commander during World War II, leading the preflight conditioning program and developing the naval wrestling program. Upon his return to Ann Arbor, Keen tried again to move away from coaching, but when athletic director Fritz Crisler asked him to return, he obliged. “I had to make the decision whether to practice law or coach. When I stuck with coaching, to most people that didn’t make sense. I kept saying I’d coach one more year, one more year … I never expected it to last 45 years.”

A charter member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, Keen was inducted to the University of Michigan’s Athletic Hall of Honor in 1980. He was the first member of the wrestling program to receive the top U-M honor and was succeeded by nine Wolverine wrestlers, including six of his pupils.