Brown Bears (1926-27)

Our next team in our roundup of old-time Eastern powerhouses is the 1926 Brown Bears, known as the “Iron Men” after their starting 11 played every minute of back-to-back wins over Yale and Dartmouth. The Iron Men also played nearly every minute in a win over Harvard. (The subs played the final two minutes so they could earn their varsity letters, a classy touch.) 

The Iron Men, in all their glory. This and the following photos
are all from the Brown Daily Herald archive.

The Bears went 9-0-1 for the only undefeated team in program history and outscored their foes, 223-35. Sounds like one of history’s greatest, right? Well, Lee Corso wasn’t born for another nine years, so he wasn't around to say “Not so fast, my friend!” 

Tip Top 25’s review of the 1926 season notes that Brown didn’t defeat any major team with a winning record. The other wins came over the likes of Rhode Island, Colby, Lehigh, Bates, Norwich and New Hampshire — today, that’s two CAA teams, two NESCAC teams, a Patriot League team and  … (pauses to look up Norwich’s league) a NEWMAC team. Not exactly the Big Ten. The tie was against Colgate, which Tip Top has tied with Brown at No. 15 in its hypothetical AP Top 25. Still, it was a pretty amazing team, especially given Old Bruno's rather spotty grid history. Tip Top has plenty more info on the ’26 Bears in the link above, give it a read.

The Iron Men, according to Wikipedia, were: Thurston Towle, Paul Hodge, Orland Smith, Charles Considine, Lou Farber, Ed Kevorkian, Hal Broda, Al Cornsweet, Dave Mishel, Ed Lawrence and Roy Randall. Randall, a back, and Broda, an end, were All-Americans. 

All-Americans Roy Randall ...

... and Hal Broda.

The coach was first-year mentor DeOrmand “Tuss” McLaughry, who’s the answer to a trivia question: Who’s the only College Football Hall of Fame coach with a losing record? His final record was 143-149-13 at Westminster, Amherst, Brown and Dartmouth (where he ran that program into the ground before he was replaced by Bob Blackman in 1955). 

Tuss McLaughry, owner
of a dubious distinction.

The uniforms, also used in 1927, came in two varieties: Plain, and with friction stripes and pads to help better secure the football. By 1928, all the jerseys were “padded.”

We’re going to move back a year for our next team, an Ivy League school that bagged its only national championship and made everyone "green" with envy (har-har).