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.