Before accepting a position at Princeton, Cappon was an assistant athletic director and basketball coach at Michigan from 1928 to 1938.

In 23 years at Princeton, Cappon won five Ivy League championships, and his trademark "five-man weave" offense became closely identified with the program.

He was a mentor at Princeton to a generation of student-athletes, including Butch van Breda Kolff, Bill Bradley and Frank Deford.

Cappon died at age 61 of a heart attack in the showers at Princeton's Dillon Gymnasium after a basketball practice session.

[7] Cappon later spoke about his early memories of oyster stew banquets, players shoveling snow off the football field and then marking it out, "dinky basketball floors" and their individual hazards, and the first state basketball tournament in 1916 when 40 teams entered a "free for all.

[2] Maulbetsch recruited other top athletes to Phillips, including future International Olympic Committee leader Doug Roby and future Pro Football Hall of Famer Steve Owen, and turned Phillips briefly into one of the country's top football programs.

[19] In February 1925, Cappon was hired by Fielding H. Yost to return to Michigan as part of the school's football coaching staff.

Former Michigan football coach George Little, then at Wisconsin, recommended Cappon to the administrators at Kansas.

"[2] On his first visit to Lawrence, Kansas, Cappon told reporters: "I always have heard of the clean, fine sportsmanship in the Missouri Valley conference, and I am glad to be coming out this way.

[1] He also served as the assistant athletic director, and in 1931 accepted the additional responsibility as head coach of the basketball team.

At the time, one columnist noted: "The Wolves have an excellent man on the campus right now in the person of Franklin 'Baldy' Cappon, assistant athletic director.

'Cappy' has scouted Big Ten basketball for the past few years, and has had something of the personnel and plays of the Michigan five.

His top players in his best years at Michigan included brothers Earl and John Townsend from Indianapolis.

[24] In February 1938, the University of Michigan hired Fritz Crisler from Princeton to replace Harry Kipke as football coach and Cappon as assistant athletic director.

[25] Although no formal announcement was made, appointment of Crisler as assistant athletic director "aroused some speculation as to the status of Franklin C. Cappon,"[26] and it was reported that the tenure of Cappon as assistant athletic director had come to an end.

While at Princeton, he was also an assistant football coach responsible at various times for the backs, the line,[32] and the ends.

[1] In January 1943, Cappon tendered his resignation as coach at Princeton in order to accept a commission with the U.S.

Cappon was a lieutenant in the Naval Aviation fitness program, where he wrote training texts and directed athletics for the fleet airwing on the West Coast.

"[35] Cappon's Princeton teams ran his trademark five-man weave offense from his arrival in the 1930s until he died in 1961.

The scheme kept all five players "in constant motion, running from one corner of the floor to the other, along the arc of what now is the three-point line.

The players had to be in great physical condition, because they were constantly on the move and were "expected to run the other guys into the ground.

He considered a fast break as a lack of discipline and would not allow his players to shoot before five or ten passes had been completed.

"[35] Another famous Princeton alum who played for Cappon is Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford.

Deford played on Princeton's practice squad while covering the varsity team for the campus newspaper.

And when something happened that there wasn't a frown to express completely, Cappy would cup his hands or rise to his feet and bellow the words: `What'rya doin' out there?'

[1] In January 1961, Cappon suffered a mild heart attack,[31] and he was hospitalized again for two weeks in the summer of 1961 with an occlusion in an artery of his left arm.

On November 29, 1961, Cappon suffered a second heart attack while showering after a basketball practice at Princeton's Dillon Gymnasium.

One of his teammates found Bradley sitting alone at the Princeton Student Center eating a pint of ice cream after learning of Cappon's death.

With a dazed look of grief, Bradley noted, "The two people who brought me here are gone," referring to Cappon and Princeton's director of admissions who had recently retired.