Ivy League 1974

And now, the Ivy League of 1974, in order of league record. Harvard and Yale shared the Ancient Eight title with 6-1 records.

A few items of note:

* Harvard topped previously undefeated Yale in the season finale, 21-16, to snag a share of the league title on a 90-yard, fourth-quarter drive led by QB Milt Holt, who a year later started in the final game in the long, illustrious history of the World Football League. Sports Illustrated's take on the game (excuse me, The Game) can be found here.

* Take a close look at Harvard's helmets. The decal on the helmet reads "1874-1974 the REAL football centennial." It was a "Take That!" (TM TV Tropes) to Princeton's claim that it played the first game of intercollegiate football in 1869, and that Harvard's 1874 game with McGill more closely resembled the football of today than the 1869 Princeton-Rutgers game. (Spoiler alert: Neither game remotely resembled today's football.) Wonder if the Crimson will be wearing the "150" patch this season?

* After winning or sharing five straight Ivy League titles, Dartmouth failed to win the title in '74 and suffered its first losing season in six years. This was also the first season the Big Green wore the "D" on the jersey sleeves after the abolition of the (unofficial) Indian mascot a year earlier.  

Take THAT, Princeton! (I have no idea where I got this image from,
but thank you to whomever posted this originally!)

Yankee Conference 1974

These are the uniforms worn by the seven Yankee Conference teams in 1974. The teams are listed in order of how they finished in the league, which gives me an excuse to put my Black Bears on top.😎

A few miscellaneous notes:

* Maine and UMass shared the league title with 4-2 YC records ... but neither team had a winning record overall (Maine was 4-6, UMass 5-6). No tiebreakers were used in determining a single league champion -- if more than one team had the same YC record, they shared the Bean Pot, symbolic of league supremacy, regardless of how they fared head-to-head. Which probably made UMass fans really happy, since the Minutemen beat Maine in a 42-0 nailbiter in the regular season. 

* UNH and Boston University were the only league teams with winning records overall.

* This was last year Vermont fielded a team. The Catamounts won only one league game, but it was over mighty UMass, their first over the Minutemen/Redmen since 1954. UVM was the only one out of the YC's seven teams to have a losing league record, but it went 3-1 against nonleague foes. UVM quarterback Bob Bateman was first-team all-YC and received the most votes of anyone named to the first team (according to the 1975 UVM Ariel yearbook).

* Northeastern didn't join the YC until 1993 (after close to 25 years of trying -- according to  the Boston Globe archives, Northeastern had been inquiring about joining the conference as early as 1968 or so), but the Huskies played five YC teams and went 1-4.