Earle F. Zeigler (August 20, 1919 – September 29, 2018) was an American–Canadian academic who was one of the founders of modern American Sport Studies.
Zeigler was born in August 1919 in New York City. After high school he received a BA (German major) from the Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. From 1941-43 he worked as swim coach and director of watersports for the YMCA in Bridgeport, Connecticut. From 1943 until 1949 he was on the faculty of Yale University, where he received his MA (German) and his PhD (Education). He taught Theory of Physical Education, football and Wrestling as well as German at the University of Connecticut. In 1949 he moved to the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ont. where he taught German and from 1950 onward he was the Director of Physical Education also instructing Football, Wrestling and Swimming. From here he moved on to the University of Michigan (1956 – 1963), and the University of Illinois, Champaign, IL (1963 – 1971) where he was the Head of the Physical Education department. In 1971 he became the founding Dean of the Faculty of Physical Education of the University of Western Ontario (until 1989).[1]
From his retirement he continued to lecture and publish.[2] The WorldCat has 269 books of him and he has authored almost five hundred learned articles. In the more recent one he is criticizing physical education for losing focus and not using its full potential to help with the diverse illnesses of modern civilization.[3] In his retirement he lived in British Columbia. He died in September 2018 at the age of 99 in Richmond, British Columbia.[4]