Howard Emmett Lepper was a professional football

American football

American football is a sport played between two teams of eleven with the objective of scoring points by advancing the ball into the opposing team's end zone. Known in the United States simply as football, it may also be referred to informally as gridiron football. The ball can be advanced by...

 player, as well as the manager, for the Buffalo All-Americans. Aside from playing football in Buffalo, Lepper also helped start the team in 1917, when they were called the Buffalo All-Stars, Niagaras and Prospects

Buffalo (NFL)

Buffalo, New York had a turbulent, early-era National Football League team that operated under three different names and several different owners between the 1910s and 1920s...

. All of the early press announcements regarding the Buffalo team, referred to Lepper as the team’s manager. Around 1917, Lepper and Frank McNeil

Frank McNeil

Francis Kenneth McNeil was a professional American football player for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He attended Washington & Jefferson College.-Notes:...

 signed a lease for the team to play their home games at Canisius College

Canisius College

Canisius College is a private Roman Catholic college in Buffalo, New York, United States. The college was founded in 1870 by members of the Society of Jesus from Germany and is named after St. Peter Canisius. The college is one of 28 institutions in the Association of Jesuit Colleges and...

.

In 1920 the Buffalo All-Americans started their season 7-0. this gave Lepper the best start for a rookie head coach in NFL history. His record was kept intact until 1931, when Potsy Clark of the Portsmouth Spartans

Detroit Lions

The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit, Michigan. They are members of the North Division of the National Football Conference in the National Football League , and play their home games at Ford Field in Downtown Detroit.Originally based in Portsmouth, Ohio and...

 broke the record with an 8-0 start. However. Barney kept his second-best start stat until November 1, 2009, when rookie coach Jim Caldwell of the Indianapolis Colts

Indianapolis Colts

The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. They are currently members of the South Division of the American Football Conference in the National Football League ....

 tied his record. A week later Caldwell tied Clark's record, giving Lepper now the third-best start by a rookie coach in the NFL.

Prior to his professionakl career Lepper played football at the high school level

High school football

High school football, in North America, refers to the game of football as it is played in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both of these nations....

 for Lafayette High School

Lafayette High School (Buffalo)

Lafayette High School is the oldest public school in Buffalo that remains in its original building; a stone, brick and terra-cotta structure in the French Renaissance Revival style, by architects August Esenwein and James A. Johnson. Although classes began off-site during construction of the...

. There he starred at tackle and place kicker leading the team to consecutive City Championships in 1914 and 1915.