New Hampshire Wildcats (1952)

 

Let's pull out another team and season from Big Bag o' Random ...

The 1952 New Hampshire Wildcats.

The Team: This was a rare off-year for UNH, which suffered its first losing non-war season since 1939 and failed to win a game in conference play.

The Players: The leader of the offense was Dick "Dum Dum" Dewing, a fullback who starred on the Wildcats' undefeated 1950 team and an all-Yankee Conference selection in 1952. The UNH Hall of Famer made noise on the field as a player, and made even more noise in his later years.

After his playing days, Dewing, became the famed "Cannon Man," the leader of the famed group of men in colonial gear who fired a cannon after every UNH touchdown, a tradition he was part of until 2019. According to this article, Dewing was "an artillery officer with the First Newmarket Militia, a Revolutionary War reenactment group." The tradition apparently began when UNH athletic director Marty Scarano wanted to surprise coach Sean McDonnell on his birthday. Sounds like everyone got a blast of it (sorry, couldn't resist). Dewing, who also served in Vietnam, died in 2021.

The cannon men wait to fire away in 2009 at a game
 I attended at old Cowell Stadium. I believe Dick Dewing
is the one in front, facing left.

UNH's 1952 offense.

The Coach: Clarence Elijah "Chief" Boston got his name from his father, who was chief of police in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. The Harvard graduate racked up a 60-57-10 record from 1949-64, which included four conference titles, two undefeated seasons and one winless campaign. 

UNH's 1953 home uniform, from the Granite yearbook.
Sadly, there's no caption, so I'm not sure who has the ball here.

Billy Pappas strikes a pose for The New Hampshire paper in 1952.
He is a member of the UNH Hall of Fame, so I'd say the caption's prediction was spot on.

The Uniforms: The basic home uniform — silver helmets with plastic jerseys, navy jerseys with two stripes on the sleeves and silver pants — went virtually unchanged from 1949-56, and the Wildcats even retuned to this look from 1960-64. The road shirts underwent some revisions over the years, but the 1949-55 versions mirror the home versions perfectly.

The Fallout: UNH went back to playing like UNH, going 13-3 in 1953-54 and winning the Yankee Conference title both times. I feel like in the early days of the YC, teams' records fluctuated more because of the obvious lack of depth compared with the big boys, even the Ivy League schools. But then, Vermont never won a conference title and UConn won five in a row later in the decade, so what so I know?

Brown Bears (1957)

Time for another dip into the bag o' random and see what we get ...

Brown, 1957. Let's do it!

The Team: The Bears went 5-4 for the second straight season and were 3-4 in Ivy League play, with the wins coming over third-place Yale, Harvard and Penn.

The Players: Here's an example of how much football has changed since the 1950s: Quarterback Frank Finney threw for two touchdowns and 11 interceptions ... and was still named to the All-Ivy second team in the backfield. Why? Well, he was also a pretty good defensive back and held the school record for career interceptions at one time. The 5-foot-10, 175-pounder (!) had a better passing season in '58, when he led the league with 982 passing yards. Did I mention football has changed since the '50s? Anyway, Finney left Brown with several career passing marks and was inducted into the school's hall of fame in 1971.

Two of Finney's blockers, linemen Don Warburton (first team) and Gil Robertshaw (second), also received All-Ivy nods.

Frank Finney in the air and on the sidelines.

The Coach: Alva Kelley guided the Bears to a 31-39-2 mark from 1951-58.He later coached at Colgate (9-18 from 1959-61) and Hobart (20-41-3 from 1963-70).

The Uniforms: Brown wore plain white helmets with a brown stripe framed by white and tan stripes. White, presumably plastic, facemasks were used, which was common in the late 1950s-early '60s. The brown jerseys had sleeve stripes that remind one of the 1960s Buffalo Bills. Tan pants (tan figured prominently in Brown's uniforms for many years) were worn home and the road. One nice touch: The sock stripes mirrored those on the jerseys, with a white set worn to match the white jerseys. This style was worn from 1957-58 (numbers were added to helmets in '58) and was discarded after Kelley left.

Brown, in white, surrenders a touchdown to Cornell.

The Fallout: Brown had its third straight winning season (6-3) in '58, after which Kelley left for Colgate. The Bears didn't have another winning season until 1964 and didn't have three straight winners until John Anderson's teams reeled off eight in a row from 1973-80. 

This, my friends, is FOOTBALL.
No superlatives or poetic pontifications needed.

Boston University Terriers (1965)

Since we're knee-deep into the offseason and there's not much else to talk about, let's grab a team out of a plastic bag and a season from the ol' random number generator and see what we get.

Boston University, 1965. Not a bad selection.

The Team: The Terriers went 5-3-1 in its final season as a University Division team, technically the equivalent of today's FBS, before dropping down to the College Division (where today's FCS, D-II and D-III were all lumped together) in 1966. Don't get too excited; nothing on BU's '65 schedule would be considered on the level of 'Bama or Georgia today. Only Rutgers (a 30-0 win) plays in Power Five conference today. Anyway, BU had its best record since 1957.

The BU Terriers hit the field in 1965. I'm pretty sure
I've run these pictures from BU's yearbook before, but hey, I've
watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" more than once, too.

The Players: This one is hard since 1) stats aren't handy; 2) BU was independent and thus didn't have any all-conference players; 3) BU doesn't make its yearbooks available online except for a few on e-yearbooks.com. But let's give it a shot. Tight end Bobby Nichols played two seasons with the Boston Patriots; defensive back Dick Farley spent two seasons with the San Diego Chargers; sophomore Tom Thornton became the starting quarterback in midseason; and halfback Dave LaRoche (not the baseball player) scored three touchdowns in the aforementioned 30-0 rout of Rutgers.

The Coach: Warren Schmakel coached BU from 1964-68, going 26-28-2. He later served as the Terriers' athletic director and was scout for the San Francisco 49ers.

Warren Schmakel, left, as BU's athletic director in  this 1971 photo
from Digital Commonwealth. At center is men's basketball coach Ron Mitchell
and at right is assistant AD Charlie Luce.

The Uniforms: BU unveiled new helmets, switching to red lids after wearing white since the 1940s. For good measure, the Terriers added a vaguely Baylor-esque "BU" on each side; I think I've said before these are among my favorite helmets ever. The jerseys were carry-overs from the early '60s, but added a vaguely Michigan State-esque "BOSTON UNIVERSITY" word mark across the front in '66. (In previous posts, I might have had BU debuting the wordmark in '65; please ignore.)

BU on the road at Temple.

The Fallout: Schmakel stayed through 1968 and beam AD in '70. His successor, Larry Naviaux, led the Terriers to their first, last and only bowl game ... which you can read about here.