1925 Project (Part 3)

It's strange to think, but as I've mentioned here a hundred times before, the teams that now comprise the Ivy League was once among college football royalty, right up there with the Michigans and Notre Dames of the world. Part 3 of the 1925 Project (here are parts 1 and 2) looks at the four of the eight Ivies, which were actually independents until formal league play commenced in 1956.  

Brown

High Point: The Bears opened their brand-spanking new Brown Stadium with a 33-0 shellacking of Rhode Island State.

Low Point: The Bears were shut out three times, by Penn, Dartmouth and Harvard (keeping in mind that football games were lower-scoring in those days and shutouts were more common).

R.J. Payor scores the first touchdown in Brown Stadium history on Sept. 26, 1925.
Note the sweater-clad official signaling touchdown on the far right.

Other Trivia: Brown played its entire 10-game schedule at home. ... Brown Stadium was built at a cost of $500,000, or $9.1 million in 2025 dollars. Wonder if included wi-fi, a retractable roof and craft beer options? ... Halfback and Michigan transfer Jackson Keefer was a third-team All-American. He was later named a member of the school's 125th anniversary team.

Uniforms: For many years, Brown wore white helmets with brown jerseys, tan pants and brown socks. Some jerseys had friction patches and stripes; others went plain.

Columbia

High Point: The Lions roared loudest against Army, winning 21-7 on Nov. 14 in front of nearly 50,000 fans at the Polo Grounds to hand the Cadets one of their only two losses in '25. Quarterback George Pease, who scored two TDs, earned a second-team All-America nod. (It was from the New York Sun, so I sense a possible hometown bias here.)

Low Point: Columbia lost 9-0 to a mediocre (4-3-1) Ohio State team on Oct. 17. 

Columbia takes on Syracuse at the Polo Grounds
— one of college football's hotbeds back in the day — in 1925.

Uniforms: As had been the case when one Lou Gehrig played for them a few years earlier, the Lions wore dark blue jerseys and socks. Like with Brown, some jerseys had friction strips/patrhes on the front and sleeves.

Other Trivia: Columbia's only "traditional" icy opponent was Cornell, which won 17-14 on Halloween. ... The Lions' schedule included lambs such as Haverford, Johns Hopkins and Alfred. ... First-year coach Charlie Crowley, a former teammate of Knute Rockne's at Notre Dame went 26-16-4 over five seasons. Legend has it that Crowley was Columbia's second choice after their first pick — Rockne — elected to stay in South Bend.

Cornell

High Point: Frederick Wester's fourth-quarter touchdown gave Cornell a come-from behind 17-14 win over Columbia on Halloween and give the Big Red — which went undefeated two seasons earlier — a 5-0 record.

Low Point: After a 5-0 start, the Big Red lost two of its final three games, including a 62-13 humiliation at pass-happy Dartmouth one week after the Columbia triumph. (This was the game where legendary Cornell coach Gil Dobie said the score should have been 13-0 Cornell because, in his words, "passing isn't football.")

Cornell tackle Frank Kearney, left and coach "Gloomy Gil" Dobie.
I'm not sure if that helmet could even protect anyone from sunburn.

Uniforms: Very similar to Columbia's, only with red instead of navy blue.

Other Trivia: Cornell fell 7-0 to Penn in the rivals' annual Thanksgiving tussle in Philadelphia.

Dartmouth

High Point: I wrote about the Big Green — the honest-to-god, co-national champions — a while back in this post. The 33-7 season season-ending win over Chicago (coached by Amos Alonzo Stagg, a man who literally helped invent the game) wrapped up the undefeated season and, ultimately, a share of the title with Alabama. 

Low Point: Well, somehow they allowed 29 points all season. That's the best I've got.

Uniforms: Green, gray and tan. I'm honestly not sure if the Greenies wore green helmets or not; that's probably lost to history.

The champs.

Other Trivia: My favorite college football rabbit hole, TipTop25, said this: "If there had been a Heisman Trophy in 1925, Dartmouth's Hall of Fame halfback Andy 'Swede' Oberlander would have easily won it, despite this being Red Grange's senior season at Illinois." The site goes on to note that Oberlander was a consensus All-American and Grange was not (Red's big season was 1924 anyway). Oberlander accounted for 26 touchdowns in '25 — 12 through the air and 14 on the ground. In the aforementioned Cornell game, Oberlander amassed at least 477 yards in total offense (per TipTop) and tossed six TDs — ho-hum today, but in 1925, when 20-14 games were considered shootouts, this must have made Sunday newspaper readers spit out their coffee and eggs. Oh, and Oberlander was a tackle on Dartmouth 1923 team that went 8-1.

George Tully (end) and Carl Diehl (guard) also were consensus All-Americans.

The 1925 Project (Part 2)

In Part 1 of this series, we looked back at the six New England state schools that played college football in 1925. Today, the spotlight shines on the non-Ivy, non-Moo U Division I teams. Part 3 will look at the Ivy League, back when Ivy football meant big-time football.

Boston College

High point: The Eagles ended the season with a 17-6 win over hated rival Holy Cross in front of 47,000 fans at Braves Field, back when BC-Holy Cross was one of the highlights of the New England sports calendar.

Low point: After a 5-0 start, BC fell to (distant) future Big East rival West Virginia to spoil any dreams of an undefeated season.

Other trivia: BC played its entire eight-game schedule at Braves Field. … Left halfback Jack Cronin went to play for the NFL’s Providence Steam Roller, who are the answer to a trivia question: What was New England’s only NFL championship team before Belichick and Brady came along?

Uniforms: Check out the Princeton-style striping on the sleeves. Otherwise, pretty basic stuff here.

Boston University

High point: The Terriers (or Pioneers; I’ve seen both names used for this season) defeated Providence 14-6 on Nov. 14 for their only win of the year.

Low point: All five BU losses were one-sided, but I can’t imagine a 51-7 loss to city rival Boston College was very fun.

Other trivia: The season was the fifth and final one for head coach Charles Whelan (three straight one-win seasons will do that to you). Whelan, a graduate of the Tufts School of Medicine, had been a chief radiologist and head of x-rays at multiple hospitals when not coaching.

Uniforms: I discussed the Terriers’ uniforms in this post. Note their use of white helmets when most other teams wore varying shades of tan and brown. Like their Commonwealth Avenue rivals, BU used Princeton-esque stripes on the sleeves.

Colgate

High point: On Nov. 14, Colgate defeated arch-rival Syracuse 19-6 in front of 30,000 fans at rain-soaked Archbold Stadium en route to its first undefeated season since 1892. All-American halfback Eddie Tyron scored two touchdowns and added a PAT.

Low point: A pair of ties against Lafayette (7-7) and Brown (14-14) were Colgate’s only blemishes on the season. 

Other trivia: Tyron, a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, scored 15 touchdowns and 21 PATs in 1925. Two years earlier, he scored seven TDs (still a school record) against Niagara. He was later a teammate of Red Grange on the New York Yankees of the original AFL and lead the one-and-done league in scoring in 1926.

Colgate was one of the powerhouses of this era, as touched upon in this post, especially after Andy Kerr became head coach in 1929. Dick Harlow, the coach from 1922-25, went 24-9-3 before leaving for something called Western Maryland (now McDaniel, a D-III school). He also coached Harvard from 1935-42 and 1946-47, going 45-39-7.

Uniforms: Pretty basic stuff here. Nary a front patch or friction strip to be found.

Delaware

High point: The Blue Hens defeated Upsala 24-7 on the strength of two blocked kicks for touchdowns. (Upsala, which closed in 1995, sounds like the name of a place you'd be sent to without a paddle.)

Low point: Delaware ended the season with back-to-back shutout losses.

Other trivia: Frazer Field, the Hens’ home field in 1925, opened in 1913 and I believe is still used today in some capacity or another. ... Delaware may be jumping to FBS in 2025, but the 1925 schedule was littered with decidedly small-time fare, including Ursinus, St. John's of Maryland, Juniata, Haverford and Dickinson.

Uniforms: Again, very basic, but easy to figure out from my end.

Holy Cross

High point: Holy Cross’ 7-6 win over Harvard on Oct. 17 marked the Crusaders’ first-ever win over the Crimson after nine losses dating to 1904.

Low point: BC’s high point, of course, would have to be Holy Cross’ low point.

Other trivia: This was the first Holy Cross team to bear the “Crusaders” moniker. As I noted in the last post, Vermont and New Hampshire added their current nicknames in 1926; I get the impression that the concept of schools having an official mascot took off during this period. According to Wikipedia (which means you know you’re getting the straight dope), Crusaders won a student poll over Chiefs and Sagamores.

Look at those numbers! They look perfect!

Uniforms: I noticed looking through photos how professional the numbers look on Holy Cross’ jerseys — big, sharp block digits. So many other teams in this period had a decidedly amateur look.

Providence

High point: Yup, Providence College — better known for its feats in basketball and hockey — once had a football team. On Oct. 17, the Friars beat St. John’s — another future basketball power — 14-6 at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, speaking of entities not known for football.

Low point: PC lost to New England Jesuit rivals Boston College and Holy Cross by a combined count of 73-0.

Heck Allen is all like, "Helmets are for wimps, brain cells be damned."

Other trivia: PC was the anti-BC in another regard — the Friars played all nine games on the road. … Halfbacks Joe McGee, Junie Bride and Heck Allen are members of the Providence College Athletic Hall of Fame. 

Uniforms: I discussed them in the BU post linked above. All the Friars appeared to have friction strips and front patches to help grip the football better..

The 1925 Project (Part 1)

Nineteen twenty-five was a pretty memorable year in college football. Coming off a monumental 1924 season, Illinois’ Red Grange continued to run up, down and around hapless foes before he took his game to the NFL upon season’s end. Alabama upset Washington in the Rose Bowl to claim a share of its first national championship.

And with whom did mighty ‘Bama share the title? Dartmouth. Yes, that Dartmouth, granite of New Hampshire in their muscles and their brains and all that. It’s the first and only “natty” the Big Green has claimed to date.

I thought it would be fun to look back at the teams covered in this little ol’ blog (and a few that aren’t) and how they fared — and looked — a century ago. We’ll start with the six New England state schools that later made up the late, great Yankee Conference.  

As for the Big Green, I covered them in this post a while back; we’ll revisit them along with their Ivy League brethren down the road.

One major caveat: I am far from 100% positive on certain uniform elements, such as helmet colors, jersey trim colors or number fonts (or if some teams even used numbers on the back; that’s how long ago we’re talking here). Some yearbooks (like Vermont’s Ariel) give a pretty good pictorial account of the athletic teams; others, like Rhode Island’s Grist … well, I have to sort through the grist and make an educated guess. 

But if anyone out there has an old Rhode Island jersey buried in the attic … 

Connecticut

High point: The Aggies (a nickname used by UConn, UMass and other cow colleges in that era) opened the season Sept. 26 with a 7-3 win over in-state rival Wesleyan. The ‘Farmers” (hey, that’s what the Hartford Courant called them in its weekly accounts) had not defeated Wesleyan in any athletic contest since spring 1922.

Low point: Following the Wesleyan win, UConn was shut out in three straight games, all losses. 

Other trivia: Tackle Oscar Nanfeldt and quarterback “Wallie” Moreland was named to the Courant’s All-Connecticut Valley team (!).

The 1925 UConn Not-Yet-The-Huskies.

Uniforms: And the fun begins right off the bat. As noted in this post, UConn flirted with orange jerseys in the mid-1920s, and indeed, the season summary in the Courant yearbook covering the ’25 season notes the orange attire. But photos from UConn’s game against New Hampshire shows UNH’s players in white vests, presumably to differentiate themselves from the normal blue-attired Aggies. But if UConn wore orange jerseys, why would UNH bother? Like they said in those Tootise Pop commercials from the ’70s, the world may never know.

Maine

High point: A 28-14 win over hated rival Bowdoin on Nov. 7 before 7,500 fans in Orono gave the Black Bears the state title, which as hard as it is to believe now, was a huge deal back then.

Low point: It’s tempting to list the 56-0 loss at Dartmouth, but those guys probably spent the rest of their lives bragging to everyone how they shared the field with the national champs. I’ll go with the season-ending scoreless tie against New Hampshire, Maine’s most hated out-of-state rival, on Nov. 14.

Other trivia: Maine claimed a share of the New England Conference title with a 1-0-1 record, even though UNH was 3-0-1 in league play. I have the Bears down for second. … Maine end Fred Newhall and tackle “Ginger” Fraser were named to the Portland Sunday Telegram’s All-Maine team.

Uniforms: About what you would expect from this era. Many, but not all, jerseys had those “friction strips” that were popular then. Maine also wore white helmets when many teams wore brown or tan lids.

Massachusetts

High point: UMass (then known officially as Massachusetts Agricultural College, or MAC) had an annual rivalry with Tufts that lasted decades. (Strange, since another future NESCAC school, Amherst, was far closer.) On Nov. 21, the Aggies defeated the Jumbos by the baseball-like score of 6-4 for their first win in the series since 1921. The series ended in 1954 — with Tufts owning a 28-14-7 advantage. In fact, UMass beat Tufts only three more times after ’25. Strange, indeed.

Low point: The season ended with an 18-13 Thanksgiving Day loss at Springfield (just down the road from Amherst) when the hosts used a “shoestring” play, in the words of the UMass Index yearbook, to take the lead in the fourth quarter. From what I’ve gathered from multiple newspaper accounts, a Springfield receiver named Maddox lined up near the sideline, apart from his 10 teammates — almost as if he were busy tying his shoelace before joining his mates — and MAC was caught napping. Of course, Springfield threw the ball to Maddox and he took off 30 yards for the winning TD.

Massachusetts decided to wear hoodies for its team photo.
As you can tell, some schools took this exercise less seriously than others
back in the day. 

Uniforms: Classic maroon and little else. Like Maine, some shirts had friction strips and others did not. I’m not 100% on the numbers.

New Hampshire

High point: The Granite yearbook doesn’t have a season write-up, so it’s hard to determine. I’d say going 2-0-1 in New England Conference play and grabbing the league title is a pretty good accomplishment, though.

Low point: The Oct. 10 game against Colby was cancelled because of SNOW. I know Waterville can be a little chilly in October, but still.

Other trivia: This was the last season before UNH adopted the “Wildcats” nickname.

Uniforms: Largely the same as in 1924, which I wrote about here. 

Rhode Island State

High point: Going by the season summary in the Grist yearbook, it sounds like Rhody’s best game was a 12-7 win over CCNY (CCNY? Wasn’t that the school embroiled in a basketball scandal?) on Oct. 24. Kenneth Brown threw a TD pass and returned a kick 65 yards for another score.

Low point: Rhody got to play the role of loyal opposition in a season-opening 33-0 loss to Brown in which the Bears opened their new stadium, which they still use today. 

Other trivia: On Oct. 3, the Rams played Western Maryland (now McDaniel College) in Baltimore at the site of the future Memorial Stadium, the beloved old home of the NFL Colts and MLB Orioles.

A college football team, or a semipro all-star bunch?

Uniforms: Another tough one to decipher. Are the shirts pale blue or dirty white? Are the pants brown or dark blue?

The team picture above shows the Rams in a motley assortment of jerseys, some of them torn and dirty. I'm guessing this was taken after practice. From what I've been able to gather, the version with the five friction strips was the one worn during games.

Vermont

High point: Like Maine, UVM placed heavy emphasis on in-state rivals, and Vermont earned wins over Norwich (3-0) and Middlebury (7-6) to claim the state championship.

Low point: Vermont was shut out four times, including three straight to Syracuse, Dartmouth and Springfield by a combined score of 82-0. If you go by the write-up in the Ariel yearbook, UVM had to overcome insurmountable odds every Saturday because of injuries or size disadvantages.   

Even in 1925, that made for a tiny lineman.

Other trivia: This was the last season before Vermont adopted the “Catamounts” nickname. The state population of actual catamounts: Zero. … Vermont ended the season with a 7-0 loss to Saint Louis, which like UVM later dropped football and became a force on the soccer pitch. (The Billikens have won 10 NCAA titles; the Catamounts recently captured their first.)

Uniforms: As basic as you can get, which makes it easier (albeit less challenging) to figure out. The Ariel yearbook covering the ’25 season was loaded with bright photos.