It's a twist of history how the first player on the cover of Time is embedded in the American psyche while Cagle is largely forgotten - I may have posted this before but here is a link to an article about his career
http://www.hapmoran.org/images/Cagle.pdf
By the way, here is another football player on the cover of Time, although in this case he's being touted as the commissioner of the new league formed by CC Pyle and Harold Grange - well past the prime of his playing days, Big Bill Edwards and the article about his new job
Monday, Oct. 04, 1926 Tsar
Professional football was once a joke. It is now a riddle. Last week in Manhattan met the various Tsars of this sport to debate on future plans, regulations. Their talk was backed by a history and menaced by a mountain.
The history is the history of professional football from its beginnings on various sandlots long ago to its sudden rise to eminence behind the weaving hips of Harold ("Red") Grange. Men took money for playing football before there were any "professionals." There were no professionals because there were no amateurs. One does not speak of a professional plumber. One does not point out as exceptional a boilermaker who accepts money for his labors. And the first professional football players were plumbers, boilermakers, who received wages simultaneously for their plumbing, their boiler-making, and their playing. Factories had their teams, mill towns and vinegar works were advertised as much by the efficiency of their elevens as the excellence of their wares. Sometimes these teams "bought" college players with big reputations to strengthen their lineups; sometimes they developed players who were afterwards "bought" by colleges. It was common practice for the big universities then, as it is for the smaller ones still, to entice able players to enroll as undergraduates, and spend six or seven years, to be graduated at length with a Bachelor's degree awarded, presumably for prowess in Sacred Studies and Botany. But before the birth of the Twentieth Century the universities began to organize, to make treaties with one another; football, already moderately standardized, became a science as rigid as modern warfare, and paid players became professionals.
Now these professionals are combined into organizations analogous to those of baseball. Thus, there is a National League and an American League. The National League is the older, contains 24 Clubs, a number obviously unwieldy. This year is the first of the American League, which is composed of nine clubs only.
The League made rules. No college player could play professionally until his class had graduated from college. As for money, visiting teams are to receive some 32%, of gross receipts, the remainder to be apportioned between the home team owners and players with a sort of bonus for high ranking at the end of the season. The football League rules are identical with those of the respective baseball Leagues save that the word "football" is substituted for "baseball" throughout. And as its overlord, sits a man whose mountainous bulk overhung last week's conference— William Hanford ("Big Bill") Edwards, the Peter Pan of Princeton.
"I have taken this job ... to help preserve high-class football as it is played in colleges . . . a clean, red-blooded sport . . . great character-builder. . . ."
Thus Mr. Edwards, his dewlap trembling with earnestness, announced to newspaper men on his assumption of the Presidency of the Professional Football League., His position obviously, is authoritative. His salary is $25,000 a year, his term of office three years; he is to football what Will H. Hays is to the cinema, Judge Landis to professional baseball. The reporters, in their stories, spoke of him as "spectacular."
All his life that word has been applied to William Hanford Edwards. He weighs 300 pounds. He can get into a lower berth but not behind the wheel of an automobile. He always sits on the aisle at the theatre. He can use ready-made handerchiefs. He once saved the life of onetime (1910-13) Mayor William G. Gaynor of New York. He is said to have been the fastest big man that ever played football at Princeton.
When William Edwards was very young a physician, examining him, declared that he was "spectacular."
"In what respect, Doctor?" inquired a relative gazing anxiously at the pink muddle on the bed.
"For his puniness," answered the practitioner.
The doctor spoke sincerely. Mr. Edwards at that time had hollow flanks. The thinness of his arms was hardly compensated for by the unhappy protuberance of his abdomen. A course at the Manlius Military School, however, so far improved him that he weighed 217 pounds before he went away to school at Lawrenceville. He became the idol of his fellows. Second formers stuffed pillows under their coats in order to resemble him. He was bulky then, but hard, and quick afoot. He entered Princeton at 268. In his junior year (1898) he became the Princeton captain, and his fame boomed like a cheer over all the land. He was at this time 268.
When, at 21, he graduated from college, the Carnegie Steel Plant at Pittsburgh offered him a job. Officials of the plant felt that he would be a useful addition to the company football team, one of the paid sand-lot elevens that were then flourishing. Mr. Edwards, sensing that he had not been called on for his knowledge of the steel business, refused. He coached for two years at Princeton and Annapolis, and used a whistle at many famous football games; a friend suggested a political career and Mr. Edwards, acceding, secured a job in the New York City Department of Street Cleaning.
His rise was rapid. Studying street conditions, he made himself an expert on refuse removal, and became, at 304, the Street Cleaning Commissioner. All the newspapers characterized his work in the department as "spectacular." And already he had won the Carnegie medal for bravery. He had been standing, that one afternoon beside Mayor Gaynor, as was his custom. It had become an old joke among those who did not like him that "Big Bill" Edwards always stood beside somebody. Whenever cameras clicked, he stood beside somebody, and in the following Sunday's rotogravures you saw somebody's picture and (in small type, reading left to right) "Big Bill" Edwards. People who called Edwards the Peter Pan of Princeton, who were bored by his after-dinner speeches, who declared that he was at heart a schoolboy who blustered his way through life seeking the loud worship of some irrecoverable football game, such people ate their words the day he stood next Mayor Gaynor. For a maniac, jerking out a pistol, emptied it at New York's good Mayor. "Big Bill" Edwards, for one moment of splendor, got back the glory of the greatest game that he had ever played as with a mechanical impulse he leaped for the murderer. There were detectives in the group that day, men trained for just such moments. "Big Bill" Edwards acted quicker than any of them. Straight as a bullet he launched his enormous bulk forward in a flying tackle that had in it all that nerve and muscle remembered of wild times on ringing fields. The gunman, still firing, crumpled backward; powder burned the sleeve of "Big Bill" Edwards; a bullet seared his arm. For a while after that he was cheered wherever he went. And even now, at a football game, in the theatre, on the street, one man will nudge another:
"'D'ye see that elephant?... Turn slowly, you can't miss him. . . Well, that's 'Big Bill' Edwards " And "Big Bill" Edwards catching the glance, will chuckle within himself. He is fat now; he couldn't run two hundred yards, but one thing he remains, and is content to remain, something that it is hard to find a name for, except an old one, and that is—well, —spectacular.