Note: Read more about Olivar’s background and career in John Iasparro’s piece for the Staten Island Advance on November 10, 2021. Biographical details from that article were helpful in piecing together parts of the biography below.
A standout quarterback and tackle in his playing days and later the head coach of the first Villanova team to win a bowl game, Jordan Olivar had Hall of Fame credentials during both his playing and coaching careers on campus. He was a member of the Wildcats varsity squad from 1935-37 and graduated from Villanova in 1938 with a degree in Education. Olivar later served as head coach from 1943-48 in the first of three successful stints as a collegiate head coach. He was inducted to the Varsity Club Hall of Fame in 1975 as part of the second-ever induction class. Olivar’s jersey number – 44 – was retired on the Wall of Fame in Villanova Stadium in 1995.
A decade’s worth of association with Villanova began when Olivar first arrived on the Main Line and played freshman football during the 1934 season. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Staten Island where he attended Curtis High School and graduated in 1930 when he was just 15 years old. He went from there to the St. George school where he played soccer and baseball, but each year was too young to play football as there was a minimum age requirement.
Olivar, a physical presence at 6-foot-4, made an impact in many areas of the Villanova campus during his academic career. He was president of the sophomore class in 1936 and was involved with intramurals as a freshman, student council as a sophomore and the Spanish Club as a junior before serving as the club’s secretary his senior year.
On the gridiron, Olivar played for Harry Stuhldreher and Maurice “Clipper” Smith during his career. Villanova was 22-4-2 (.821) in his three varsity seasons from 1935-37 and outscored its opponents by an impressive 400 points (513-113) in just 28 games played. The team’s success included playing in the Bacardi Bowl in Havana, Cuba at the end of the 1936 season. It was the first-ever bowl game appearance for the Wildcats and the first of three bowl games that Olivar would participate in at Villanova as a player and coach.
In the 1938 school yearbook, Olivar and teammate John Mellus were dubbed “the greatest tackle combination ever to play football” and Olivar was noted as being “the most intellectually brilliant football man ever to attend this school.” The latter superlative would prove true during Olivar’s coaching career at Villanova, Loyola Marymount and Yale as he became known for his passing schemes.
Olivar was a junior in 1936 when first year head coach Clipper Smith guided the team to a 7-2-1 record. The tie came in the season’s final game when the Wildcats and Auburn played to a 7-7 draw in the Bacardi Bowl. Played on January 1, 1937, the game was the seventh in eight editions of the Bacardi Bowl and the only contest of the eight which featured two American teams playing each other as opposed to a U.S. college team playing against a Cuban team. The game before the Bacardi Bowl was a 12-0 win at Manhattan on November 21, 1936, and it was significant because it was the first game in what grew to be a program record 22-game unbeaten streak (19-0-3) which stretched until the early part of the 1939 season.
The unbeaten streak was on full display in 1937 when Villanova was 8-0-1 and astoundingly registered eight shutouts in nine games while outscoring its opponent by a 185-7 margin. Olivar was named the team’s co-MVP and the following Spring he was ranked second in his graduating class.
After college Olivar began teaching and coaching at nearby Radnor High School and he got his first head coaching job at Roman Catholic High School in Philadelphia in 1942. He would return to Villanova soon after however and was the Wildcats head coach from 1943-48. Olivar guided his alma mater to a 33-20-2 record in his six seasons as head coach, including a 14-5-2 mark in his last two years when Villanova made consecutive bowl game appearances.
During his coaching tenure Olivar guided Robert David and William Kuzman to first team All-America honors in 1944. Villanova had a .500 or better record in each of Olivar’s seasons as head coach and won six or more games in each of his final three years. In 1947, the Wildcats went 6-3-1 and narrowly lost to Kentucky (24-14) in the Great Lakes Bowl in Cleveland. The following year, Villanova opened the season with a 34-14 win over Texas A&M at Franklin Field and went on to post regular season wins over Miami (Fla.), Detroit and North Carolina State in addition to tying Kentucky in a bowl game rematch.
Villanova defeated Nevada, 27-7, in the Harbor Bowl in San Diego on January 1, 1949 in Olivar’s final game as Wildcats head coach. After the season he was hired at Loyola University of Los Angeles (now called Loyola Marymount) and he recorded a 17-11 record in three seasons there. Ironically, the first opponent he faced at Loyola at the start of the 1949 campaign was the Nevada team Villanova had beaten just a few months earlier. Olivar’s 1950 Loyola team was ranked as high as 22
nd in the nation and had won 13 straight games spanning the 1949 and 1950 seasons. Six members of the 1950 squad eventually played in the NFL.
Olivar achieved his greatest coaching success at Yale from 1952-62 where he compiled a 61-32-6 record. Yale upset Army, 14-12, in front of 70,000 fans at the Yale Bowl in 1955 and went on to win the first-ever Ivy League title in 1956. Oliver’s 1960 team was the first undefeated Yale squad in 37 years and finished 14
th nationally in the final
Associated Press poll, ahead of the likes of Michigan State and Penn State. Olivar was named the season’s AFCA Coach of the Year.
Olivar’s overall collegiate head coaching record was 111-63-8. Each year Yale presents the Jordan Olivar Award to a senior who has earned the highest respect of his teammates. Loyola Marymount awards the Jordan and Stella (Jordan’s wife) Olivar Scholarship to a financially deserving student-athlete.
Olivar retired from coaching after the 1962 season to run an insurance business on the west coast that he had started during the offseason of his years at Loyola. He continued making contributions to college football however and mentored the UCLA offense in a move from the single wing to the more modern T-formation of the time. Olivar is credited with pioneering the belly-t formation and the belly series. He wrote
“Offensive Football – The Belly Series” which was published in 1958 and considered the authoritative account of the subject.
Olivar passed away on October 17, 1990 at his home in Inglewood, Calif. at the age of 75.
