Small College Rival: A Gridiron Menace

For almost thirty year, from 1874 to 1903, Harvard's small college opponents acted their appointed roles to perfection--and lost. Since then, a mounting record of football upsets has caused the Crimson fan to regard these little teams as pitfalls rather than as stepping-blocks to a victorious season.

The most famous reversal occurred in 1921 when a small, ivyless team known as the "Praying Colonels' from Danville, Kentucky, made its second visit to the Stadium. The varsity eleven that year had already polished off two other minor oponents in a single afternoon. It had beaten B.U., 10 to 0, and Middlebury, 16 to 0, by splitting its squad in half for the season's openers. And it had, if fact, defeated these same "Colonels" from Centre College by two touchdowns during the previous season. But that day the tiny team from Kentucky ended a Crimson winning streak of 25 consecutive victories.

No Longer Invincible

Now, more than three decades later, although no longer able to sweep football doubleheaders, the varsity team faces much the same problem as it did in '21. This afternoon, an untraditional rival returns to the Stadium for a second visit, coming from Athens, Ohio, with that same thought of revenge that Centre's Colonels boasted of.

The Crimson football fan, however, no longer regards an upset victory over his team as a calamity. Reassured regularly by such anonymous teams as the University of Massachusetts (13 to 7 in '54) and Tufts (7 to 0 in '45), Harvard's gridiron followers now realize that the Crimson does not win them all, even against the little teams.

Virginia Wins 47-0

The main point of the Athletic Association's policy in scheduling these small college games has been to provide the football team with "conditioning contests." These games supposedly enable the coaches to experiment and to build the players up physically without too much fear of a loss. In the past, however, these obscure matches have produced an ironic toll of injuries, as well as occasional losses. Even now Crimson fans can remember how Captain Dick Clasby sat out last year's Princeton game after being injured in his team's 42-6 route of tiny Davidson College.

The most startling blow to Harvard's small college rivalry came in 1947 when the H.A.A. scheduled a game with a mediocre Virginia University team only to find the following fall it had become the powerhouse of the South. Virginia proceeded to roll up 250 yards rushing to the varsity's 63 and gave the Crimson eleven the second worse trouncing in its history, 47 to 0.

In addition the Cavaliers put out Harvard's Captain Vince Moravac for the rest of the season with a broken kneecap. The final score itself proved to be a sharp reversal of the Crimson's opening victory when more fortunate scheduling had provided cartoonist Peter Arno with the opportunity to quip about the Harvard graduate. On that occasion, the eleven whipped Western Maryland, 52 to 0.

By no means, however, has the varsity eleven habitually lost to its lesser opponents. Long before the disappointed Stadium crowd of 50,000 in 1921 had ever heard of Centre College their team had amassed scores up to 124 to 0 over smaller colleges.

In an editorial before the Exeter game in 1887 when Harvard frequently tangled with the larger prep schools, the Daily Crimson had written. "Exeter is by no means invincible as many seem to think, and if the team goes into the game with a fixed determination to win and not in a fainthearted spirit, there are good grounds that the squad may wrest a hard-contested victory from an Academy which now holds the foremost place in football among the preparatory schools of New England."

The day after the game however, the Crimson apologetically reported it had learned that the varsity and not the freshmen, as was supposed, had traveled to New Hampshire to play Exeter. In the meantime the varsity had trounced the Exonians in its scoring record, 158 to 0.

In 1926, when signal-stealing first made a team huddle necessary before each play, the littlest college in Harvard's football history contributed the Crimson fan's most awakening gridiron experience. That was the first year a Harvard varsity football team lost its opening game. And what's more, it was defeated by a squad of 24 players from Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa.

The game had mainly been scheduled because Geneva's coach was the same popular "Bo" McMillan who had first led Centre College to immortal fame in the Stadium five years before. It was true that the Crimson's new coach Arnold Horween had expected a fierce battle, but he never actually considered the Crimson could lose. Then because of Geneva's small size, the only explanation of the loss that could be offered was the rather logical confession in the following issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

Carlisle Constant Threat

The editors admitted, "Colleges of the size of Geneva do not have to have as many candidates for their teams as Yale, Harvard and the great state universities have, but they have enough. Only eleven players need to be on the field at any time."

In the days when the Crimson eleven was accustomed to sweep all its contests except the game with Yale, who has spoiled nine undefeated varsity seasons, the most constant threat for an upset victory was Pop Warner's unorthodox team from the Carlisle Indian School.

In the last varsity game to be played on Soldiers Field in 1903, the Crimson barely managed to avoid an upset after Warner's legendary hidden-ball play had given the Indians an early lead. The Braves were returning a kickoff when the whole team came together on the seven-yard line and the ball was slipped up the jersey of Charlie Dillon, a Sioux Indian from South Dakota. Then a flying wedge was formed and Dillon scored to put Carlisle ahead, 11 to 0. Harvard finally did win, however, by a score of 12 to 11.

Four years later, using all their past chicanery, including forward passes, fake kicks and twisting punts, the Indians eventually did maneuver their upset. After ten consecutive losses to Harvard, they triumphed in the Stadium, 23 to 15. The game was played with ill feeling on both sides. Indian players Wauseka, Little Boy and Afraid-of-a-Bear were constantly on the verge of fist-fighting with the Crimson team. One Harvard player was, in fact, ejected from the game for slugging Wauseka.

Jim Thorpe's extraordinary place-kicking enabled the Indian team to upset the Crimson a second and last time in 1911. Thorpe kicked four field goals in all, including one from the Harvard 48-yard line to put Carlisle ahead 18-15. The two teams met just once more after that game.

The tale of the "Praying Colonels" of 1921 has now become almost synonymous with the word upset itself. The unusual team's pious customs were enough to warrant a contest in the Stadium, aside from the fact Centre College was becoming the favorite team of the nation.

It seemed that instead of retiring to the dressing room during the halftime rest, the Centre College players would sit about in a huddle at midfield with their blankets drawn up over their heads. Then the president of the College, a clergyman, would come down out of the stands and lead them in prayer until the laying resumed.

Centre's First Defeat

In their first visit to Cambridge in 1920 the Colonels attracted a crowd of 52,000 in the stadium and the Crimson whipped them, 31-14. The game, moreover, proved to be so popular Centre was immediately added to the varsity's 1921 schedule.

In an article before the second game, the following season, a Boston Herald sportswriter explained that ever since Centre College had gone in for "better" football teams in 1917 it had only lost two games, one of them to Harvard in the previous season, and one to Georgia Tech the week after the first loss at Cambridge. This second defeat came only because they had not been able to recover from the game on the previous Saturday.

The Daily Crimson, however, had labeled its team the favorite since it considered any team coached by Robert Fisher virtually impossible to beat.

But the inevitable came that Saturday in 1921 when the yellow-jerseyed "praying Colonels" clinched the game early in the third period on a 32-yard run. It was a bewildered collegiate crowd of 43,000 that went home wondering what the hell was the Centre College.

The result at the University had been something like the aftermath of the Amherst game in 1903 when for the first time in varsity history a visiting team won on Soldiers Field. The undergraduate attitude to that loss was adequately summed up in a Boston Globe editorial: "... Harvard has no excuses. The eleven was clearly outplayed in the second half and beaten fairly. To be sure, Amherst's score was in the nature of a fluke, but that fluke was enough to win."

Not all of the Crimson's ignominious defeats came at the hands of tiny, college teams, however.

The most questionable "upset" in the varsity's entire history was administered by a big underrated Pennsylvania University team, 12 to 6. The H.A.A. had previously asked about the possible ineligibility of Penn's star lineman, Lamson, a 25-year-old senior playing his seventh year of intercollegiate football.

Crimson Schedule Favorites

Aside from that, after the game, played on a bitterly cold day, it was said among some that the Crimson players, wearing short cleats, had been at a disadvantage during the contest. Hearing that Harvard had light, fast backs, Pennsylvania had sprayed the ground of Franklin Field in Philadelphia with hot water which made it extremely slippery. The varsity backs twice slipped and fumbled within their own 10-yard line.

On the winning side, the varsity's favorite schedule scape-goats have been the little three Maine colleges (Bates, Bowdoin and Maine.) These together have provided the Crimson with 51 victories without a loss. Williams, who has never beaten the University in 30 tries, has been another losing favorite, scoring a total of 24 points in all of ils matches with the Crimson.

To the Harvard alumni and undergraduates, games with the small, untraditional colleges have usually been acceptable affairs. There has always been discussion in the newspapers and at the Harvard Clubs on giving up The Big Three arrangement and such powerful opponents as Army and Stanford but no one has ever mentioned forsaking the Crimson's lesser, unknown foes.

In spite of the scattered upsets, these matches have usually provided the Crimson fan with an opportunity to boast, "I believe Harvard did win last Saturday."