Meet Jock Sutherland, the Pitt dental student who became a football legend.
By Megumi Barclay
In 1917, the University of Pittsburgh football team earned an unusual nickname: “The Fighting Dentists.” Every position on the team was filled with a dental student. At the heart of this academic and athletic anomaly was John Bain “Jock” Sutherland, a Scottish immigrant who would become the “crown jewel” of Pitt athletics—serving as a student, player, professor, and eventually coach for the University.
Sutherland was admitted to the University of Pittsburgh to study dentistry in 1914. In his first year, he joined the football team despite reportedly never having played before. Standing six-foot-four and weighing more than 200 pounds, he quickly caught the eye of coach Joe Duff. By his second game, he was a starter. Under the direction of coach Glenn “Pop” Warner, Sutherland became an All-America guard, leading the Panthers to two national championships in 1915 and 1916, with only one loss throughout his collegiate career.
After graduation, Sutherland became a demonstrator for the dental school in crown and bridgework. He briefly coached at Lafayette College before returning to Pitt as head coach in 1924, where he also served as professor in the School of Dental Medicine.
E.J. Borghetti, special assistant to Pitt's senior vice chancellor for external relations and former chief spokesperson for Pitt athletics, noted that while early 20th-century football relied on “brute force,” Sutherland approached the game as a form of “pure science.” He was an exacting teacher who demanded that his players execute assignments with surgical precision.
“I had the honor of meeting a number of his former players over the years,” Borghetti recalled. “Each of them always referred to him as ‘Doctor Sutherland.’ Never ‘Coach’ or ‘Jock.’ That’s the high esteem and respect they had for him.”
Borghetti added: “His experience as a dental student no doubt influenced how he taught his players. And make no mistake, Sutherland saw himself first and foremost as a teacher. Football was merely Sutherland’s vehicle to mold and shape young men.”
This discipline extended beyond the playbook. Sutherland famously set the pace for his team by walking up the steep incline of Pittsburgh’s “Cardiac Hill” to the stadium. Any player caught hitching a ride in a car was greeted with extra laps at practice.
Sutherland’s tenure was the golden era of Pitt football. Between 1924 and 1939, he amassed 111 wins and claimed five national championships (1929, 1931, 1934, 1936 and 1937). His teams were so dominant that after Pitt defeated Notre Dame 21-6 in 1937, Irish coach Elmer Layden famously called off the series, claiming his team was “no good the next week” after being battered by Sutherland’s Panthers.
Sutherland later moved to the professional ranks, coaching the Brooklyn Dodgers and later the Pittsburgh Steelers.
His legacy remains visible across Pitt's campus—from images throughout Pitt’s football practice facility at the Duratz Athletic Complex on South Water Street to Sutherland Hall, the first-year residence hall that bears his name. More than a coach or clinician, Sutherland embodied the intersection of intellect and athletic excellence, leaving a standard that continues to define Pitt athletics today.