[1] He served as the head football coach at Jefferson College in Convent, Louisiana during the early 1910s, Louisiana State University (LSU) from 1914 to 1916, and Wake Forest University for one season, in 1917.

MacDonnell was also the head basketball coach at Wake Forest for the 1917–18 season, tallying a mark of 4–12, and the school's head baseball coach in the spring of 1918, notching a record of 9–3.

[2] After graduating from Colgate in 1910, MacDonnell began his coaching career at Jefferson College.

MacDonnell died of a heart attack, on March 30, 1956, while vacationing in McColl, South Carolina.

This biographical article relating to a college football coach first appointed in the 1910s is a stub.