He served as the first head football coach at Ohio State University.

[1] A plaque at the Ohio State football stadium memorializes him as "A Lone and Ardent Volunteer".

[3] More recent research establishes that Lilley began coaching in the fall of 1890 and did not coach the first Ohio State game (vs. Ohio Wesleyan) in May 1890.

At the time of his death he was a manager for a shipbuilding company in New York.

This biographical article relating to a college football coach first appointed in the 1890s is a stub.